Iran is to complain to FIFA that its players have been imprisoned in the World Cup ’s Sin City. The Middle East nation had to switch its training camp from Tucson, Arizona, to sex, booze and drug-drenched Tijuana, just over the Mexican border, due to its recent war with the US.
Players are only allowed out for training and to jet to America for matches before being rushed straight from the showers to an aircraft that will whisk them 127 miles south. The team of devout Islamists has claimed it is the ‘most oppressed’ at the World Cup.
Iran has been consigned to a city teeming with bars, gambling dens and brothels – all of which are outlawed to Muslims.
A giant advert for a casino sits right outside Iran’s training HQ at local team Club Tijuana’s stadium just five miles from the US border. Prostitution is legal in the city’s notorious Zona Norte red light district packed with bars, clubs, brothels, sex shops and seedy massage parlours. Around 30,000 of Tijuana’s 2.4million residents are sex workers.
The city’s giant Hong Kong Gentlemen’s Club is running its own version of the World Cup with pole dancers dressed in rival international team colours battling it out for customers. An army of cash collectors scoop up dollar bills fans stuff inside pole dancers’ thongs.
Others gyrate covered only in shaving foam. Sources say the Iranian players never leave their hotel – save to train or fly to games. Captain Mehdi Taremi and head coach Amir Ghalenoei have blasted FIFA for trapping them in the vice capital. After their opening match against New Zealand they were immediately escorted out of the US. “Everything is like disaster for us,” said Taremi.
“It’s not good for the football. In the World Cup, you have to prepare for the next game, which is a lot of stress for the players and the staff and everyone. But we don’t have that support and FIFA have to help us more than this.”
Ghalenoei said: “Our team is the most oppressed one in the whole World Cup.” Iran’s football federation said it will lodge a complaint with FIFA after its request to travel to Los Angeles two days before its World Cup match against Belgium on Sunday was rejected.
It said it believes ‘such restrictions are inconsistent with the principle of providing equal conditions for all participating teams and may negatively affect teams’ preparation processes’. Iran soccer secretary-general Hedayat Mombeini said: “We are the only team that are participating in the World Cup that we are at the host cities just 24 hours and it is not fair. All these limitations on us – it has negative effects on our physical and mental things on our players.”
The restrictions on Iran have not been lifted despite an interim agreement to end the war with the US and Israel. A total of nine members of Iran’s backroom staff have been barred from entering the US after doing national service with the nation’s Islamic Republic Guard Corps – which is outlawed as a terror network in America and Canada.
Iran – which drew 2-2 with New Zealand – will play its final group game against Israel in Seattle on Friday (June 26). A source said the players were ‘very withdrawn’ in vice capital Tijuana.
“While there’s lots to do there’s not a lot for them to do,” they said. “They are all very quiet and polite but the team is very closed. I can’t imagine what they would think of the Hong Kong club.”
FIFA had not responded to a request for comment.