A big obstacle on the way to send the Iranian football team.
Iran's amputee soccer team, which has been preparing itself to participate in the World Cup in Mexico, is on the verge of leaving this competition due to financial problems. An incident that once again turned the economic problems and difficulties in sending sports teams to international competitions into one of the challenges of Iranian sports.
In recent days, news was published about not sending this team to the World Championships, and this caused many athletes in the field to complain about the authorities' lack of attention.
The head of the Federation of Sports Associations told Fars:
The number of members of the delegation was about 30 people, and the cost of the plane ticket for each person reached about 1 billion 500 million tomans. The president of the association was supposed to attract a sponsor to cover these expenses and even the letter from the federation was delivered to the sponsor to make the necessary arrangements, but in the end the sponsor gave up on this issue and the expenses could not be covered.
In the association we cover more than 30 sports and the budget given to us is much lower than the cost required for such a task. The Ministry of Sports also gave us some help, but this support did not even reach a quarter of the expedition's expenses.
The state of the flights was also one of the reasons for these events. Even Iraq did not cooperate with Iran for the national football team, which can be expected from other countries. Some people think that because the national soccer team was in Mexico during the World Cup and they were welcomed, this deployment will be easy for us, but I must say that our budget is not comparable to the soccer federation.
In terms of its nature, this branch is more related to the Federation of Veterans and the Disabled, but the Ministry of Sports decided to transfer it to the Federation of Sports Associations.