Getty Images<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/aside>\n“We respect all Iranians, be it the Iranians who are inside the country or Iranians who are outside the country,” Taremi said through a FIFA interpreter. “We are here to play football, and football can always unite all factions. Our people, we love them inside or outside Iran. For many years, the civilized country of Iran has been a united nation. We want to showcase that unity. We are here at the World Cup to bring joy to Iranians wherever they are.”<\/p>\n
“We, the players of the national team, we play for every Iranian, be it the Iranian diaspora or be it Iranians in the country,” Taremi later added. “Look, in every country, people have different opinions, but we are here as footballers to unite people, and we will try to bring joy to all Iranians, irrespective of where they live.<\/p>\n
“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and we respect them, but we are here to bring joy to the Iranian people. We do not get involved in politics. We are here to play football.”<\/p>\n
As he did in conversation with ESPN earlier in the week, Taremi noted the tension surrounding the tournament when questioned about how he felt coming into the World Cup, while he used his closing remarks to note the dearth of questions about New Zealand.<\/p>\n
“Nobody asked any football-related questions,” he said. “We are playing the excellent New Zealand team tomorrow, and I very much hope it’s going to be a good game.<\/p>\n
“For the political, you have to go to other cities for this political press conference. We have high respect for New Zealand, and we want it to be a good game. We will make sure that we play a beautiful game for all the spectators, and I hope New Zealand will have the same attitude. I look forward to tomorrow.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joey Lynch Close Joey Lynch is a Melbourne-based sports journalist and AYA cancer advocate. Primarily working on football, he has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_animmysite_disable_animation":false,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/a1.espncdn.com\/combiner\/i?img=%2Fphoto%2F2026%2F0615%2Fr1673337_1024x576_16%2D9.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usa-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trendifyhubusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}