President Hassan Rouhani has ordered the ministries of sports and foreign affairs to take up the matter of visas and related issues for the Iranian women’s national futsal team to participate in the world tournament in Guatemala.
The Iranian Football Federation had earlier claimed that the women’s futsal team will be unable to participate in the 2015 World Tournament due to visa problems.
The Iranian women’s team won the Asian Cup this year and was set to go to Guatemala, according to statements by the federation.
Although the Iranian team won the championship in Asia, they will not attend the competition as officials said obtaining visas for all team members is a difficult task.
“As Guatemala does not have an embassy in Tehran, we have to travel to Germany in order to get visas, but the other problem is that we have to obtain Schengen visas before traveling to Germany,” Varzesh (Sport) 3 news website quoted Ali Kafashian, head of the Iranian Football Federation, as saying on Friday.
Local media reports suggest that this is not the first time that the women’s team has missed an international event as the team did not take part in the futsal cup games hosted by Colombia for similar reasons.
Asia’s top team will unfortunately not be competing in the World Cup due to “the lack of adequate and timely administrative coordination,” reports IRNA.
Kafashian also said the federation’s efforts to secure sponsors for the trip have “unfortunately failed, and the team will not be able to participate in the world tournament.”
Sport writers and experts have often criticized the federation for failing to invest enough time, money and energy in women’s athletics and sports and spending generously on men’s sports despite the fact that some in the latter fail to deliver and/or do not produce respectable results in international competitions.
