Turkey’s national football team will host Team Melli for a friendly international match today in Istanbul.

The World Cup preparation match at Fatih Terim Stadium will kick off at 8:30 p.m local time

It will be the first encounter between Turkey and Iran in 45 years, since their last match in 1974.

Turkey qualified to the finals of the FIFA World Cup on two occasions only in 1954 and 2002 and finished ninth and third respectively.

Turkey’s dreams of participating in the 2018 World Cup were crushed after it had suffered a 3-0 defeat against Iceland last October.

Meanwhile, Carlos Queiroz will not remain at the helm of the Iran national team after the World Cup in Russia, the former Real Madrid coach told Reuters Thursday.

Queiroz, who has been in charge of Team Melli since April 2011, had been offered an extension to his contract by the Iranian Football Federation until January’s Asian Cup finals in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). But the 65-year-old has decided to call time on his seven-year stint with the Iranians after the World Cup, where they have been drawn to take on Morocco, Spain and Portugal in Group B.

“It’s almost one year since we qualified for the World Cup and it’s true that they gave me an offer to go for six months to the Asian Cup in the Emirates, but it didn’t meet my expectations,” Queiroz said by telephone from his team’s training camp in Turkey.

“After all these years, for the Iranian federation to only extend the contract for six months is a decision that shows no appreciation or recognition for what I’ve done. It’s an offer that isn’t acceptable from my point of view.

“Before we came here to Istanbul the federation was supposed to review the position and they did not come back to me, so from now on it’s time to move forward.” Queiroz had considered retiring after the World Cup to spend more time with his family but now wants to become the first coach to secure qualification for the World Cup finals on five occasions.

Brazilian Carlos Alberto Pereira and Serbian Bora Milutinovic have coached five times at the World Cup, with both taking charges of teams that had either qualified as hosts or stepped in as replacement coaches for already qualified nations.

After Turkey, the team will go to Austria to hold another warm-up match against Greece on June 2. Finally, the Persians will face Lithuania before starting the breathtaking matches against Spain, Portugal and Morocco in the 2018 World Cup.