Iran’s World Cup soccer team is scheduled to play matches in the US in June, but the Iranian Football Federation is threatening to pull the team out of the tournament in protest of the attacks raining down from host nation USA.
Iran has the opportunity to do the funniest possible thing, which would be to have the men’s Iranian national soccer team defeat the United States and knock them out of the World Cup tournament during the ongoing US military strikes against Iran. But these attacks are no funny matter to Iran’s government.
As such, KTVU reports that Iran’s Football Federation is threatening to pull their soccer team out of the World Cup tournament as a protest move against the US and Israeli attacks on their country. The matches are set to begin June 11, and with North America the official host, many of this year’s World Cup matches are being played on US soil, even at Santa Clara’s Levi' s Stadium.
Iran’s team is not scheduled to play any games here in the Bay Area, though they are scheduled to play on US soil, with matches scheduled in other US host cities Seattle and LA.
That said, the US and Iranian teams could theoretically meet in the Knockout Round, a game that would have quite a riveting backdrop.
"That's never happened before," University of San Francisco sports management expert Michael Goldman told KTVU. "There would be financial and reputational issues associated, and certainly impact on the athletes and the fans, and an impact on FIFA in terms of how they manage the tournament and what happens to those games.”
KTVU speculates that Iran could also petition to have its matches moved to other host cities in Mexico or Canada, though that just seem pure speculation. Plus KTVU also reports “that outcome is considered unlikely, as match locations are already set.”
The irony is that President Trump, who ordered the military strikes on Iran, also threatened to move some World Cup matches too. His rationale was that the West Coast US cities are "run by radical left lunatics who don’t know what they’re doing."
Another irony? If Iran’s team did indeed quit the World Cup tournament, their likely replacement team would be that of Iraq, another nation with which Iran spent years at war.
Of course, the World Cup tournament is still a little more than three months away, and no one knows where the US invasion of Iraq will stand at that point. Will a new Iranian regime be in place? Will the hostilities be long over? Will Trump find a way to lose this war?
The world, and the Iranian men’s national soccer team, can only wait and wonder.
Related: Bay Area World Cup Schedule Announced, and Team USA Might Play One Game Here [SFist]
Image: DOHA, QATAR - JUNE 05: IR Iran fans show their support prior to the FIFA World Cup 2026 Qualifier match between Qatar and IR Iran at Jassim Bin Hamad Stadium on June 05, 2025 in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Mohamed Farag/Getty Images)
