Iran and Qatar have signed a four-year football Memorandum of collaboration commencing before the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

The presidents of FFIRI Shehab Azizi Khadem and Sheikh Hamad bin Ahmed Al Thani, President of the Qatar Football Association, attended the signing ceremony earlier today (Thursday) in Doha.  According to the memorandum, the two federations will collaborate in holding friendly matches, exchange of training facilities as well as training camps at all levels of different age categories of their respective national football teams, including men and women. The long-term collaboration between the two sides, which will soon be implemented in various fields, is important due to the good relations between the two countries, ease of logistics and transportation, proximity, and cultural commonalities of the two countries.

With Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup, its state-of-the-art facilities and modern infrastructure will be available to National Iranian football teams in Qatar. In this meeting, Hamidreza Mehr Ali (acting vice president of the FFIRI), Rafiei (legal advisor to the president of FFIRI) and Dragan Skocic (head coach of the national team) accompanied Azizi Khadem. Also present at the meeting was FIFA’S Deputy Secretary-General Football, Mattias Grafström.   Last night on the sidelines of the opening ceremony of the FIFA Arab Cup, Azizi Khadem had a meeting with Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, who is scheduled to travel to Iran in February 2022.

Azizi Khadem has traveled to Qatar at the official invitation of the President of the Qatar Football Federation. Qatar will host the Qatar FIFA World Cup in November 2022, and the Iranian national team is just one step away from qualifying for the tournament. With this contract, it can be hoped that the national team will take advantage of Qatar’s sports facilities to hold camps and friendly matches within a year of the tournament.