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On the morning of June 15, an airliner will leave Tijuana, Mexico, with Iran’s national men’s soccer team on board, fly 55 minutes north, and land at Los Angeles International Airport in California. The players will be driven to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, where, that evening, they will play their opening World Cup match against New Zealand. After the final whistle, they will return to Tijuana, because that is where the United States government has agreed they may sleep. The same routine will be repeated six days later for the group game against Belgium and then again five days after that to play Egypt in Seattle.

The geography of Iran’s tournament—three matches in the United States, every night spent in Mexico—was decided in late May during a series of phone calls between FIFA, Iranian Football Federation President Mehdi Taj, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. This was all because U.S. President Donald Trump made the unprecedented decision to ban the Iranian team from spending the night on U.S. territory.

On the morning of June 15, an airliner will leave Tijuana, Mexico, with Iran’s national men’s soccer team on board, fly 55 minutes north, and land at Los Angeles International Airport in California. The players will be driven to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, where, that evening, they will play their opening World Cup match against New Zealand. After the final whistle, they will return to Tijuana, because that is where the United States government has agreed they may sleep. The same routine will be repeated six days later for the group game against Belgium and then again five days after that to play Egypt in Seattle.

The geography of Iran’s tournament—three matches in the United States, every night spent in Mexico—was decided in late May during a series of phone calls between FIFA, Iranian Football Federation President Mehdi Taj, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. This was all because U.S. President Donald Trump made the unprecedented decision to ban the Iranian team from spending the night on U.S. territory.

Politics have shaped the geography of the World Cup before, but never quite like this. On occasion, visiting teams have refused to play in a host’s territory. The Soviet Union famously did so in November 1973, when the second leg of a World Cup qualifying playoff was scheduled at the National Stadium in Santiago, Chile, shortly after Augusto........

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