Chris Jones writes:

It’s hard to imagine a more fraught combination for what was supposed to be a fun Friday night: Seattle’s Pride celebration will feature a World Cup match on June 26 between Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death, and Egypt, where homosexual activity is punishable by up to three years in prison.

When FIFA’s schedulers announced the Pride Match pairing after December’s draw, it felt a little like a sick joke. The Egyptian Football Association has said it will reject “in absolute terms” any signs or symbols of gay pride. Mehdi Taj, the head of the Iranian football federation, told news agencies that the game assignment was an “irrational move,” and just about everyone was, for once, on Iran’s side.

Iran’s role in the entire tournament has since become a much thornier dilemma: Whether the country will participate at all will remain in doubt until 11 men take the field for their opening game against New Zealand, scheduled for June 15 in Los Angeles. In March, after the United States and Israel killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s sports minister said that the country “was not in a position to participate in a World Cup.” Iran then petitioned FIFA to move its group-stage games to Mexico, but that plea was rejected. Late last month, Iran moved its base camp from Tucson to Tijuana. FIFA brokered the deal after the U.S. balked at hosting the Iranians for extended periods.

“Football unites the world,” Gianni Infantino, FIFA’s president, likes to say, ignoring the fact that the U.S. keeps bombing Iran, and that fans from Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast are still subject to President Trump’s full or partial travel bans. An Ebola outbreak has also threatened the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s participation. Less than a week out from the biggest men’s World Cup in history, Infantino’s easy rhetoric is proving no match for the world’s more complicated realities.

At FIFA’s annual congress, held in April in Vancouver, delegates from 210 countries were registered as present during the impossibly long roll call. (“Faroe Islands?” “Present.”) The single absence was Iran’s, after Taj had his Canadian visa revoked mid-flight for having once been a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, listed by Canada as a terrorist entity. He arrived in Toronto, was refused entry, and was sent back to Tehran.

Trump had promised that Iran’s players would be allowed to enter the U.S. “It would be hard to believe they have a good team, but we must let them play at the World Cup,” he said recently. The Iranians left their farewell celebrations in Tehran and headed to Ankara, Turkey, to get fingerprinted for their visas, not knowing if they’d receive them. The players finally did, on June 5; Iran said that more than a dozen staff and officials, including Taj, were denied visas but will reportedly travel to Mexico in the hopes of winning belated approval. Nobody seemed to know how the drama would end—except, that is, for Gianni Infantino.

“Of course, Iran will be participating at the FIFA World Cup 2026,” he said during his address at April’s congress. “Of course, Iran will play in the United States of America. The reason for that is very simple, dear friends. It is because we have to unite. We have to bring people together.”

He ignored the fact that during an earlier test of the electronic voting system, delegates from the 210 members in attendance were asked to agree to the fact that they were gathered in Vancouver.

In a secret ballot, five voted no.

This World Cup cycle, the first to include 48 teams and share hosting duties among three countries, is expected to bring in a record $13 billion, and each of the participating countries will pocket a base reward of $12.5 million. It was supposed to be $10 million, but Infantino began hearing complaints from even rich countries feeling the squeeze: travel, hotel, and ticket costs threatened to leave teams in the red. His last-minute decision to increase payouts, announced two days before the congress, quelled a larger revolt.

Managing Trump has proved trickier. In December, Infantino awarded him the first FIFA Peace Prize, an obvious play at soothing Trump’s anguish for his not having received the Nobel. Even by Infantino’s usual standards for lightly concealed skid-greasing, it was a shameless display. [Continue reading…]