{"id":55051,"date":"2026-06-26T05:46:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T12:46:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=55051"},"modified":"2026-06-26T05:46:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T12:46:05","slug":"iran-trying-to-make-nation-proud-despite-challenges-ghalenoei-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2026\/06\/26\/iran-trying-to-make-nation-proud-despite-challenges-ghalenoei-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran trying to make nation proud despite challenges, Ghalenoei says"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reuters – SEATTLE, Iran aim to make their nation proud against Egypt with a place in the World Cup knockout stages on the line, coach \u200bAmir Ghalenoei said on Thursday, while he refused to be drawn \u200con the Pride celebrations surrounding the game.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Team Melli have fought to secure back-to-back draws against Belgium and New Zealand, giving them an outside chance of topping Group G, despite having been \u200brequired to enter and leave the United States shortly before and \u200bafter their matches.<\/p>\n

U.S. authorities have eased travel restrictions ahead of the match \u2060against Egypt, though Iran’s football federation said on Wednesday that officials had “caused problems” \u200bwhen the side travelled from their Mexican base for Friday’s game.<\/p>\n

Ghalenoei told reporters \u200bthat the restrictions had “physically affected us” in previous games, but that Iran are now “fitter and also we are in a better position”.<\/p>\n

He said Iran’s ability to enter the U.S. \u200bearlier before matches “was our right, which we should have had in the \u200btwo previous games”.<\/p>\n

IRAN SEEK TO STOP PRIDE DISCUSSION
\nThursday’s press conference began with a FIFA official \u200creading \u2060a statement from the Football Federation of Iran, telling reporters Ghalenoei would only answer questions about the Egypt game.<\/p>\n

But Ghalenoei brought up travel restrictions on Iran without being asked about the issue and the discussion quickly turned to \u200blocal organisers’ decision to \u200bdesignate the game \u2060as Seattle’s “Pride Match”.<\/p>\n

Ghalenoei, echoing Egypt coach Hossam Hassan’s comments, said his side were only concerned with the match.<\/p>\n

“We are going to \u200bbe positive,” he said. “We are not going to think \u200babout any \u2060other issues … we seek to bring joy to our people.”<\/p>\n

He added: “Our entire focus is going to be on tomorrow’s game, on succeeding in tomorrow’s game, and anything \u2060else \u200bthat is banned … we don’t want to speak \u200babout it.
\n“We are only going to speak about football, what a beautiful game it is and \u200bhow enjoyable it’s going to be.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reuters – SEATTLE, Iran aim to make their nation proud against Egypt with a place…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":55052,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":93,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55053,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55051\/revisions\/55053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}