Mexico’s president sees ‘no issue’ with her country hosting Iran’s World Cup team during tournament

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Mex­i­can Pres­i­dent Clau­dia Shein­baum said on Mon­day that she has “no is­sue” with her coun­try host­ing Iran’s World Cup team af­ter its train­ing base was moved from the Unit­ed States to Mex­i­co for the sum­mer soc­cer com­pe­ti­tion.

The team will still play its match­es in the U.S. but its base has been moved to Ti­jua­na, Mex­i­co, just south of San Diego, Cal­i­for­nia, ac­cord­ing to Iran’s soc­cer fed­er­a­tion. The de­vel­op­ment comes against the back­drop of the war in Iran, which the U.S. and Is­rael launched on Feb. 28.

Shein­baum said at a news con­fer­ence Mon­day that she was told by a FI­FA rep­re­sen­ta­tive the U.S. was re­luc­tant to have the Iran­ian soc­cer team spend time out­side the games on U.S. ter­ri­to­ry.

“The Unit­ed States doesn’t want the Iran­ian na­tion­al team to stay overnight in the Unit­ed States,” Shein­baum told re­porters. She said a FI­FA rep­re­sen­ta­tive had then asked, “Can they stay overnight in Mex­i­co?”

“And we said, ‘Yes, no prob­lem. We have no is­sue with that’,” she said.

Iran’s soc­cer team is slat­ed to play match­es in In­gle­wood, Cal­i­for­nia, against New Zealand on June 15 and against Bel­gium six days lat­er, be­fore fac­ing Egypt on June 26 in Seat­tle.

Be­fore the war broke out, the team was orig­i­nal­ly planned to set up its base in Tuc­son, Ari­zona. But with ten­sions sim­mer­ing, Iran’s team moved its base to Ti­jua­na in Mex­i­co, Shein­baum said, con­firm­ing an an­nounce­ment by the Iran­ian fed­er­a­tion over the week­end. The fed­er­a­tion said the Ira­ni­ans had re­ceived ap­proval from FI­FA, though it has not con­firmed the move.

Teams use base camps to train be­fore and af­ter match­es. This year’s World Cup runs from June 11 to Ju­ly 19 and will be co-host­ed by the U.S., Cana­da and Mex­i­co.

The pos­si­bil­i­ty of a move had sim­mered for months in the un­cer­tain­ty sur­round­ing the war in the Mid­dle East and se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. U.S. sanc­tions on Iran were like­ly to on­ly make the team’s stay in the U.S. more com­plex.

The U.S. State De­part­ment said in a state­ment on Mon­day that Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump had made it clear the Iran­ian team was wel­come to par­tic­i­pate in the tour­na­ment.

The de­part­ment’s state­ment did not ad­dress where the team might stay, or Shein­baum’s com­ments.

Shein­baum said that her gov­ern­ment was work­ing with FI­FA to hash out all the de­tails be­fore the com­pe­ti­tion. —MEX­I­CO CITY (AP)