By Joiner Martínez
Mehdi Taj, president of the Iranian Football Federation, will not attend the FIFA Congress in the Canadian city of Vancouver after being denied entry to the country.
Taj and two other federal officials suffered “inappropriate treatment by immigration officials” when they were rejected at the Toronto airport, so they decided to return to their country.
Taj was granted a visa on Monday, but this was revoked the next day due to his links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), considered a terrorist organization in Canada and of which he would be a former member of the IRGC.
FIFA Congress in Vancouver
The 76th FIFA Congress takes place this Thursday in Vancouver, which is also one of the host cities of the World Cup that will be held from June 11 to July 19 in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Representatives from each of football’s governing body’s 211 federations were expected to attend the event, which begins on Thursday.
The United States does not intend to exclude Iranian players from the 2026 World Cup, Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently indicated.
However, he expressed his reservations about the people likely to accompany the team, “some of them with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards.”
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