Iranian football had a good week on its troubled path to playing World Cup games in the United States in June.A first face-to-face meeting with FIFA President Gianni Infantino since the US and Israel started a war against Iran on February 28 made genuine progress in football diplomacy at the end of a fraught month.The Iranian football federation’s upbeat readout of the meeting in Turkiye made no mention of moving World Cup games to Mexico — a subject Infantino has repeatedly shut down for the past two weeks.Infantino also offered tangible help for the squad to prepare for the World Cup in the next two months. Most Iran players are with clubs in the national league, which has shut down during the war.Iran’s World Cup hosts in Arizona in the US said this week that they were pressing on with training-camp upgrades plus local and federal security plans – echoing the “stick to the schedule” mantra that FIFA has used.Infantino stayed on in the Turkish coastal resort of Antalya to watch Iran rout Costa Rica 5-0 in a warm-up.Clearly, the next two months are full of uncertainty for Iran’s team and for the nation itself amid mixed messages about US intentions for the war.Still, talk of Iran bo …
