Iran Could Be Thrown Out Of World Cup

Iran's preparations for the 2010 World Cup qualifiers is, by all accounts, in a bit of a shambles already.

Because of delays to the Iranian Football Federation elections and the lack of a head coach, they had not submitted a team squad to FIFA by the January 4th deadline.

Safaei Farahani, the chairman of the IFF Transitory Board, issued this warning a week or so ago:

"I just know that if we do not submit the list by January 4th, Iran will be eliminated from World Cup Qualifier games. I have expressed the sense of emergency of this issue to other members in our meeting tonight and that we should act as fast as possible."

"I also have to add, the process of submitting the squad list does not only consist of the names of the players, but also the completed documents of these players. Hence we really have very short time left."

There were moves in the 2006 World Cup Finals to exclude Iran because of the actions of their President (see this post) but this time around it seem like they are quite capable of shooting themselves in the foot without any additional political intervention.

However, despite missing the deadline, Iran have called up a 50 man squad (yes, you did read that right) for the qualifying campaign.