Iran out of the World Cup now has a date and a city attached to it. Iran’s senior men’s soccer team will open its Group G path with a June 26 match against Egypt in Seattle, then play its other two group-stage games at SoFi Stadium in suburban Inglewood.
The schedule puts Team Melli in front of the largest segment of the Iranian diaspora in the United States, where many Iranians arrived after the 1979 Islamic revolution. By some estimates, over a million Iranians live in Southern California.
Steven Beitashour, a longtime MLS standout and one of the only Iranian Americans in history to play for Team Melli, said, "It’s huge." He added, "It’s a massive sport for the entire country – 90 million people, and the No. 1 sport is football, soccer."
Beitashour on Team Melli
Beitashour’s view cuts through the clean bracket language. "There are no real other sports that they’re competing with," he said. "Any player on the national team is a hero in the country." He also pointed to the memory that follows many supporters into the stands: "There’s a little bit of nostalgia – when you think back to when everyone was a kid – and they probably went to a lot of these games at Azadi Stadium [Iran’s home ground]."
Iran, Seattle, and Southern California
That pull runs in two directions. The regime treats Team Melli as part of its global profile, while the team also carries deep meaning for exiles and descendants who left under the pressure that followed the 1979 Islamic revolution. The World Cup in the United States brings those audiences into the same tournament map.
Arash Noamouz said the Seattle twist still sounded hard to absorb six months after the World Cup draw, and the geography now leaves Iran’s followers with a clear travel pattern: Seattle on June 26, then two matches at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. For supporters in Southern California, the closest games are not abstract group-stage dates; they are the ones that fall in their own region.
SoFi Stadium and Group G
That is the practical shape of Iran’s trip. One match lands in Seattle, and the rest stay at SoFi Stadium in suburban Inglewood, keeping much of the group within reach of Many Iranians in the United States. For the people Beitashour described, the schedule turns a World Cup run into something they can actually build around.
