{"id":54549,"date":"2026-02-16T10:29:51","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T18:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/?p=54549"},"modified":"2026-02-17T16:39:34","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T00:39:34","slug":"iran-may-face-nigeria-and-costa-rica-in-march-friendlies-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/2026\/02\/16\/iran-may-face-nigeria-and-costa-rica-in-march-friendlies-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran to face Nigeria and Costa Rica in March friendlies [Report]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, <strong>The Football Federation of Iran (FFIRI) is expected to officially announce Team Melli\u2019s friendly match schedule as preparations intensify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to speculation, the federation has been in negotiations with the football federations of Costa Rica and Nigeria to arrange two warm-up matches in March.<\/p>\n<p>This follows earlier announcements suggesting Iran would face European heavyweights Spain and Portugal in preparation fixtures.<\/p>\n<p>There were also discussions with Senegal regarding a potential friendly, though no final agreement has been confirmed.<\/p>\n<p>Iran have been drawn into Group G, where they will face Belgium, Egypt, and New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tehran Times &#8211; TEHRAN, The Football Federation of Iran (FFIRI) is expected to officially announce&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26307,"featured_media":54550,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,92,86,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-54549","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-c47-featured-news","category-c21-international-football-news","category-c13-team-melli-news","category-world-cup"],"views":740,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54549","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=54549"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54565,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54549\/revisions\/54565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.persianfootball.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}