{"id":38545,"date":"2020-01-27T09:41:58","date_gmt":"2020-01-27T17:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=38545"},"modified":"2020-01-27T09:41:58","modified_gmt":"2020-01-27T17:41:58","slug":"can-azerbaijan-serve-as-a-playground-for-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2020\/01\/27\/can-azerbaijan-serve-as-a-playground-for-iran\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Azerbaijan serve as a playground for Iran?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Eurasianet – BAKU, Baku has offered to host international soccer matches while its neighbor to the south has been deemed too unsafe.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soccer is among the arenas where international tensions are taking a toll on Iran. Under a temporary ban from hosting international soccer matches, Tehran might need a home away from home for games scheduled in Iran. Its neighbor to the north, Azerbaijan, appears ready to step into the breach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Citing security concerns, the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) has\u00a0banned\u00a0Iranian teams in its championship tournament to host games in Iran in the wake of the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet by the Iranian military. Iran\u2019s soccer authorities have taken issue with the decision, but AFC is not taking its chances: Two of the tournament\u2019s preliminary matches have been rescheduled and moved from Iran to the United Arab Emirates, but the time and place for other games are yet to be decided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iran has four clubs participating in the Asian Champions\u2019 League. Some of the clubs and national soccer officials said they would bail out of the games altogether in protest of what they called an \u201cunfair decision,\u201d or take the Confederation to international court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if they stay in the tournament, Azerbaijan has offered to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBaku has all the conditions to host international games with participation of Iranian teams. This includes modern stadiums, comfortable hotels, road infrastructure,\u201d Firuz Garayev, spokesperson for the Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan,\u00a0told\u00a0the Azerbaijani news outlet Haqqin.az.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oil and gas-rich Azerbaijan has been investing lavishly in glitzy sports infrastructure. Hosting international sports competitions, from soccer games to\u00a0mini-Olympics\u00a0to\u00a0Formula 1 races, has been part of Baku\u2019s policy to gain global prominence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Iran and Azerbaijan have a complicated relationship, thanks to Iran\u2019s large Azerbaijani ethnic minority, Azerbaijan\u2019s growing devout Shia population, and Baku\u2019s friendly ties with Israel. Baku, however, did strongly condemn the U.S.\u2019s killing of top Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, which brought Washington and Tehran to the brink of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The decision about picking substitute venues for the Asian Champions\u2019 League games ultimately rests with the AFC and Iranian football federations, and no one appears yet to have reached out to Baku. For all its territorial proximity and fancy sports infrastructure, one argument works against Azerbaijan: the country is not part of the Asian Football Confederation. Like other Caucasus countries, Azerbaijan plays in the European tournaments instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Befitting Azerbaijan\u2019s east-meets-west identity, the Iranian teams\u2019 Asian championship games could be interspersed with the games that\u00a0Baku will host\u00a0as part of UEFA\u2019s Euro 2020 tournament this summer. \u201cAzerbaijan can host games for the Asian league throughout the entire season, with the exception of the days when finals for the UEFA 2020 will be taking place in Baku,\u201d Garayev said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eurasianet – BAKU, Baku has offered to host international soccer matches while its neighbor to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":38546,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[90,84,92,91,86,1,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c17-asian-competitions","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-c20-other-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-uncategorized","category-world-cup"],"views":947,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26307"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38547,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38545\/revisions\/38547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}