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View all search resultsIran was the only nation missing from a FIFA planning summit for World Cup participants held last week in Atlanta, deepening questions over whether the country's soccer team will compete on US soil this summer amid an escalating regional war.
As history has shown with regard to past Olympic boycotts, a similar move against this year's World Cup will be an equally futile, symbolic maneuver that achieves nothing more than moral signaling and spectacle, in addition to harming sport’s potentials as a soft power.
Indonesia reached the fourth round of Asia's qualifiers for the first time last year with a squad built largely from players born overseas, and Herdman said that the experience will provide a platform for the team to improve.
With Indonesia’s national soccer team failing to qualify for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, Erick Thohir faces intense pressure as chairman of the Soccer Association of Indonesia (PSSI). The setback may also threaten his role as Youth and Sports Minister in President Prabowo Subianto’s cabinet, a position now seen as vulnerable given his lack of formal political party backing and the apparent move to expel former president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s allies from the government.
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