Iran says it's being treated unfairly. Its World Cup travel schedule isn't unique

Iran's World Cup team says it's unfairly being made to travel to matches the day before games and return immediately after, but that schedule itself isn't uncommon among teams.

So how does it work, with 48 teams criss-crossing 16 cities across three countries? Iran has been forced to comply with what White House FIifa task force head Andrew Giuliani said were previously mandated rules stemming from the war, but those restrictions also align with Fifa guidelines for general team travel.

Team Melli made the 204-kilometer charter flight from Tijuana International Airport to Los Angeles International Airport the day before its opening 2-2 draw against New Zealand on Monday (June 15), a typically short trip that team captain Mehdi Taremi said instead took five hours, including security and immigration checks.

Iran returned to Mexico right after the match, which ended about 8pm Pacific (11am Singapore time). The team had hoped to stave off travel for a day after the game.

The team's request to travel to LA two days before Sunday's match against Belgium was also denied, the federation said late Thursday, adding that it will lodge a complaint with Fifa. In a statement, the federation noted Sunday's earlier kickoff - noon Pacific - and said it believes "such restrictions are inconsistent with the principle of providing equal conditions for all participating teams and may negatively affect teams' preparation processes."

"We are the only team that are participating in the World Cup that we are at the host cities just 24 hours and it is not fair," Iran football secretary-general Hedayat Mombeini said through a translator Friday. "All these limitations on us, it has negative effects on our physical and mental things on our players."

But the Iran team's travel schedule itself is not unusual for short distances in this tournament. And Fifa's 2026 World Cup regulations state in Article 18.3 that "each team shall travel from its team base camp to the match venue one day before matchday (MD‑1) and in exceptional cases on MD‑2, and shall return to their team base camp after the match (on MD/MD+1)."

The restrictions on the Iran team have not been lifted despite an interim agreement to end the war. Some team officials and support staff have been unable to secure visas to the US, and player Mehdi Torabi had to visit the US consulate in Tijuana to get a new visa after the first match.

Many teams have been arriving in host cities the day before their matches. For Friday's group-stage match against Australia, the US made the roughly 1,580-kilometer flight from their base in Orange County, California, to Seattle on Thursday. The team intended to return to its hotel in Laguna Niguel after the match.

Some CONCACAF teams preferred to arrive on the day before games for World Cup qualifiers at Mexico City, where sports performance experts advise players won't have time to acclimatize to the altitude so should get there as close to kickoff as possible.

Bosnia-Herzegovina has the longest group stage travel, at 9,460 kilometers in total. The Dragons had a roughly 2,670-kilometer flight each way from Salt Lake City to Toronto, 950 kilometers to Los Angeles and 1,110 kilometers to Seattle.

Bosnia's travel is far shorter than the 14,484-kilometer trek for the US at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, the longest among the 32 nations. The Americans went from their base camp in Sao Paulo to Natal, a distance of 2,311 kilometers, three days before their opener against Ghana. They made the 2,948-kilometer trip to Manaus two days before of their game against Portugal and the 2,126-kilometer journey to Recife two days in front of their match against Germany.

Four years ago in Qatar, all stadiums were within 50 kilometers of downtown Qatar, enabling for teams to stay in one hotel throughout the tournament.

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