Iran's World Cup squad relocates from Los Angeles to Tijuana, coach calls team 'most repressed' at tournament

Iran's national football squad will leave its Los Angeles training base and relocate across the border to Tijuana ahead of its next 2026 FIFA World Cup fixture, with head coach Amir Ghalenoei telling ESPN on 16 June 2026 that his squad is "the most repressed" delegation at the tournament.

The squad is in the United States as a competing nation at the first 48-team World Cup, staged across venues in the US, Mexico and Canada, with the US hosting the bulk of the group-stage matches. Iran was drawn into a group featuring at least one fixture routed through California, putting the delegation into the US immigration system that other teams in their section have not had to navigate.

Ghalenoei's framing to ESPN was blunt. He described his players as the most restricted contingent in the tournament, a pointed reference to the constraints the squad operates under inside American jurisdiction, including the recurring restrictions placed on Iranian travellers entering the United States. The coach's comments landed two days before a cluster of group matches in the same tournament window, including Switzerland's 4-1 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina in Los Angeles, the Czech Republic versus South Africa opener at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and Mexico's meeting with South Korea, all fixtures that proceeded without any comparable travel disruption to the sides involved.

What "repressed" means in a US immigration file

The specifics behind the move are not spelled out in the available reporting. ESPN's 16 June dispatch documents the relocation decision and the coach's characterisation, but the visa mechanics driving it are not on the record. That gap matters: relocation decisions at this scale involve the US State Department's visa-issuing posture, Customs and Border Protection port-of-entry handling, and the host federation's logistics with FIFA.

This is not the first time an Iranian delegation has run into the US visa wall at a major sporting event. In 2019, the Iranian fencer Alireza Bajelan was granted a visa to compete at a US Open event after a long legal fight, while at other moments Iranian athletes have been unable to enter the country at all. The 2026 World Cup is unique because the tournament is physically being staged inside the United States for the host nation's benefit, while competing sides from adversarial states must clear the same immigration system.

Ghalenoei's word choice, "repressed," translates a visa-and-mobility complaint into political language. By his framing, the Iranian squad is competing at the World Cup on terms their peers are not: training at a distance, crossing a border to reach their own host city, and answering to officials with authority no other group at this tournament faces. The coach did not expand on the record to ESPN about what specific movement restrictions the squad had been placed under inside the US.

Tijuana is the workaround, not the resolution

Moving operations to Tijuana keeps the squad on the continent and within reach of its California-based fixtures, while removing its members from the daily friction of US immigration status. The choice is a workaround. It does not fix the underlying posture, but it does normalise a tournament where a competing national team conducts its base outside the country hosting it. The Tijuana option is available because the 2026 World Cup is binational in a way past tournaments were not, with Mexico hosting matches and the geography giving federations an exit that the 2018 or 2022 events did not offer.

The Mexican border city also comes with its own logistics. The squad must cross back into the United States for matchdays and training sessions that require it to be in country, with each entry point governed by the same immigration system that pushed them out in the first place.

The coach at the centre of it

Ghalenoei has been head coach of Iran across a stretch that includes qualification campaigns through the 2026 cycle, a tenure defined by results on the pitch and the politics of selection off it. He is one of the more senior figures in this tournament's coaching ranks, in a cohort that also includes Carlos Queiroz, who is coaching at a fifth consecutive World Cup, the longest such run at this edition.

What the rest of the field is doing this week

While Iran shifts its base, the rest of Group-stage play continues at full pace. Switzerland routed Bosnia-Herzegovina 4-1 in Los Angeles, with 20-year-old Johan Manzambi breaking the deadlock with a volley. Czech Republic and South Africa kicked off their group fixture at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. Mexico faced South Korea in a match that had first place implications in their group. The contrast is the point: those teams played their games without relocating across a national border to get to the pitch.

Ivory Coast, meanwhile, had its own immigration disruption this week, with striker Elye Wahi, who is being investigated over suspected match-fixing, denied a Canadian visa for the side's fixture against Germany in Canada, a separate but adjacent case of an African delegation running into the host country's entry controls.

The records that should exist next

The factual record on the relocation is thin. Iran's Football Federation has not publicly stated which category of visa the squad held, whether a specific entry was refused or delayed, or whether US Customs and Border Protection issued any guidance specific to the Iranian delegation. FIFA has not commented on whether the federation's logistics team was involved in the relocation decision.

Until any of those bodies publish on-the-record explanations, the move stands as a coach's decision under conditions he described as repressive, documented by ESPN and not yet explained by the institutions that hold the relevant documents. The squad's next fixture, wherever it is staged, will tell the rest of the story.

Note from the desk: Monexus framed this as a coach-characterised, on-the-record relocation, declined to fill the visa gap with inference, and flagged Iran's two parallel cases (fencer Bajelan in 2019, the 2026 squad) as documented context rather than as explanation. The Ivory Coast–Canada denial is reported as an adjacent parallel, not a moral equivalence.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Iran at the FIFA World Cup, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_at_the_FIFA_World_Cup
• Wikipedia: 2026 FIFA World Cup, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_FIFA_World_Cup
• Wikipedia: Amir Ghalenoei, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amir_Ghalenoei
• FIFAcom Telegram (Carlos Queiroz, oldest head coach), https://t.me/s/FIFAcom
• FIFAcom Telegram (oldest head coaches in World Cup history), https://t.me/s/FIFAcom
• ESPN: Pulisic training solo ahead of US vs Australia, https://www.espn.com
• ESPN: How teams can qualify for knockout rounds, https://www.espn.com
• ESPN: Ivory Coast's Wahi denied Canada World Cup visa, https://www.espn.com
• BBC Sport: Manzambi volleys Switzerland into lead against Bosnia, https://www.bbc.com/sport
• Sky Sports: Manzambi helps Switzerland close on knockout stages, https://www.skysports.com