Iraq’s World Cup playoff thrown into doubt as war shuts airspace and strands players

Graham Arnold sat in a hotel room outside Iraq this month, watching digital flight maps fill with red no-go zones over Iran and his adopted team’s homeland. As missiles and drones crossed Middle Eastern skies, the coach of Iraq’s national men’s soccer team picked up the phone and made a plea to the sport’s governing body.

“We are struggling to get our players out of the country,” he said in comments published March 9. With Iraq’s airspace closed and roads in the north threatened by drone strikes, Arnold appealed publicly and formally for world soccer’s authorities to move what he called “the country’s biggest game in 40 years.”

At issue is a single, high-stakes match that could send Iraq to its first World Cup since 1986 — or keep it out without kicking a ball.

Under the existing schedule, Iraq is due to face the winner of a Bolivia–Suriname playoff on March 31 at Estadio BBVA in Monterrey, Mexico. The winner will claim one of the final berths at the 2026 World Cup, joining a group that already includes France, Norway and Senegal.

That match is part of a new six-team intercontinental playoff tournament organized by FIFA. The mini-event, split between Monterrey and Guadalajara, is set to run from March 26 to 31 and will decide the last two qualifiers for the expanded 48-team World Cup being co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada.

For Iraq, just getting to the starting line has become the biggest challenge.

War closes Iraq’s skies

The crisis began Feb. 28, when U.S. and Israeli forces launched large-scale airstrikes on targets in Iran. Iran responded with missile and drone attacks against Israel and against Gulf states that host U.S. forces. In the days that followed, at least eight countries, including Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, closed all or part of their airspace to civilian traffic.

Iraq’s civil aviation authority issued a blanket suspension of civil flights, later extended “until further notice.” International carriers scrambled to reroute around a swath of closed skies stretching from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, adding hours to flights and stranding passengers across the region.

For Iraq’s national team, known as the Lions of Mesopotamia, the closures have made assembling a squad and traveling to Mexico a logistical puzzle with no clear solution.

Many of Iraq’s leading players are based in the domestic league. With airports shut and neighboring air routes disrupted, the team has not been able to gather as planned in Baghdad or in a neutral camp abroad. Arnold, the Australian coach hired in 2025 to lead Iraq’s World Cup push, has been working from outside the country because of the conflict and travel restrictions.

“Iraq is a team that is predominantly players from the domestic league,” Arnold said in his appeal. “For the country’s biggest game in 40 years, we need our best team available.”

A 25-hour road trip rejected

FIFA, which oversees the playoffs and the World Cup, has kept the Mexico tournament in place and has not publicly announced any changes. The organization did not respond to multiple requests for detailed comment on Iraq’s appeal or on contingency plans for the intercontinental playoffs.

Officials from Iraq’s football federation said they have been in regular contact with FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation about the situation. In a statement, the national team said its participation in the March playoff was “in doubt” because of the combination of airspace closures, security risks and visa complications. It said the international bodies were “fully aware of every development.”

According to Iraqi and European media reports, one option suggested to Iraqi officials by organizers was for the team to travel more than 25 hours overland from Baghdad through northern Iraq and into Turkey, then fly from Istanbul to Mexico.

Iraq rejected that route, citing safety concerns in the north of the country, where Iranian drones have struck targets in recent weeks, and the physical toll such a journey could take on players days before a knockout match.

“It’s not just about football,” people close to the team said. “You cannot put players on buses for a day through areas where drones are flying and call that a solution.”

Arnold’s proposal: play later, in the United States

Instead, Arnold has put forward an alternative. He has said the Bolivia–Suriname match, scheduled for March 26 in Monterrey, should be played as planned. Then, he argued, Iraq should face the winner in the United States “a week before the World Cup” in June, in a one-off playoff staged on American soil.

“Play Bolivia versus Suriname now,” Arnold said. “And then we play the winner in a ‘winner stays, loser goes home’ game in the U.S. just before the tournament.”

Arnold also linked his suggestion to wider uncertainty over Iran’s own participation in the World Cup. The war has raised questions about whether Iran can or will take part in a tournament partly hosted by a country leading strikes on its territory. Under FIFA’s regulations, if a qualified team withdraws or is suspended, its spot can be reallocated, typically within the same confederation.

“FIFA needs time to decide what Iran is going to do,” Arnold said, arguing that a delayed playoff could give the organization more room to handle that scenario while avoiding forcing Iraq into unsafe travel or a weakened lineup.

So far, there has been no indication from FIFA that it is considering moving the Iraq match to a later date or a different location. A FIFA operations official was quoted anonymously in one report as saying the World Cup was “too big to postpone,” a comment that reflected broader reluctance to alter timelines but did not specifically address Iraq’s case.

A rare chance for Iraq

The stakes for Iraq are substantial. The country’s only previous appearance at a World Cup came in 1986, also in Mexico, when it exited in the group stage after narrow defeats to Paraguay, Belgium and Mexico. In the decades since, Iraq has endured war, international sanctions, insurgency and political turmoil, and its national team has rarely come close to reaching the sport’s biggest stage.

Securing the Asian Football Confederation’s intercontinental slot required Iraq to navigate a long qualifying path and win a playoff against the United Arab Emirates. The March 31 match in Monterrey was supposed to be a one-game shootout for football’s most coveted prize.

For many Iraqi fans, a return to the World Cup would represent a rare moment of shared national pride.

“This is not just a football match, it’s something the whole country has been waiting for,” the Iraq Football Association said in a recent statement. “Everyone understands what it would mean for our people.”

Unequal burdens in a global sport

Bolivia and Suriname, Iraq’s potential opponents, face their own sporting challenges. Bolivia has traditionally struggled away from the high altitude of La Paz and has not qualified for a World Cup since 1994. Suriname, a small nation in South America’s northeast whose team competes in the CONCACAF region, has never reached the tournament.

Neither, however, is trying to qualify out of a country with closed airspace and embassies operating on emergency footing.

Visa issues have compounded Iraq’s problems. Mexico does not have an embassy in Iraq, leaving some players to seek visas through Mexican missions in Saudi Arabia or Qatar. Those embassies have at times reduced operations because of the regional security situation, slowing paperwork and limiting appointment slots.

Legal experts say FIFA’s rules allow matches to be moved or postponed for security reasons, but decisions are made case by case. Historically, the organization has taken a range of approaches when politics and war have collided with its competitions.

In 1973, after the Soviet Union refused to play a World Cup playoff in Santiago following the Chilean military coup, FIFA awarded Chile a place at the finals by default. In the 1990s, Yugoslavia was barred from European Championship and World Cup qualifiers because of United Nations sanctions. More recently, Ukraine’s playoff for the 2022 World Cup was postponed and relocated after Russia’s full-scale invasion, and matches across world football were rescheduled or moved to neutral venues during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In online discussions and expert commentary, some analysts have questioned whether FIFA is applying consistent standards when conflicts involve different parts of the world or different major powers. Others caution that the current war has shut down vast air corridors and affected multiple countries at once, making it more complex than a single unsafe stadium or city.

Mexico’s role and security questions

The choice of Mexico as playoff host is part of a broader plan to use venues in Monterrey and Guadalajara as operational test events ahead of the 2026 World Cup. The stadium in Monterrey, home to C.F. Monterrey, is scheduled to stage both the Bolivia–Suriname match and the winner-takes-all game against Iraq.

At the same time, separate reporting has highlighted security concerns in parts of Mexico, including around Guadalajara and Monterrey, following high-profile cartel violence. Tournament organizers and Mexican authorities have said they are working to ensure the safety of teams and fans, and there has been no move to change playoff venues.

That juxtaposition — a team in a war-affected country being asked to navigate drone-exposed roads and closed airports to play in a city that has drawn its own security scrutiny — has added to the sense of strain around Iraq’s playoff.

Waiting for a decision

With the first playoff match in Mexico less than two weeks away, Iraq’s situation remains unresolved. Players based in Europe and other regions may be able to reach Monterrey via circuitous routes, but the core of the squad, drawn from Iraqi clubs, is still tied down by flight bans and uncertainty.

Arnold has said he does not want special treatment, only a chance for Iraq to compete on even terms.

“We just want a fair opportunity to qualify with our best team on the pitch and our players safe,” he said.

For now, the bracket in Monterrey has not changed. Whether Iraq can reach it — and under what conditions — will depend on decisions made far from the training grounds and stadiums, in meeting rooms where global calendars, television contracts and security assessments intersect.

What happens in the coming days will help determine not only who takes one of the final places at the 2026 World Cup, but also how international sport responds when war closes the skies above one of its contenders.