Ben Fisher

Another episode of this kind of weirdness and...

Everything that feels wrong, really, about their participation in terms of the way it's been handled by FIFA, by the US ultimately, the visas, just the whole, yeah, the way it's been handled.

The hotel was quite, it was quite another reminder, really, really heavy police presence, sniffer dogs around, drones, mobile surveillance, some protesters being talked to by the police, one sort of escorted away.

The hotel, I believe, was kind of emptied.

Yeah, so they're kind of anti the Iran team, which again, I was saying to Alex earlier, it's this interesting dynamic because you have kind of Iran v. the US to a degree, you have Iran v. FIFA, then you have Iran v. Iran in their own...

um people um and at the press conference I mean and the weird thing with this is that aspect of it is not new right so that's just a continuation but it is a quite sobering reminder of of that backdrop when you're there I was in Qatar a few years ago when it was Carlos Queiroz getting bombarded with all the

understandable questions and it was kind of the same story today Mehdi Tarimi saying you know the backdrop is everything that is against what FIFA kind of preach really in terms of peace and joy and you know this kind of idea that all the nations come together it's one big happy family and as we know it's not and Tarimi made a good point it's not even just Iran you know we've seen he actually didn't name check the referee but he alluded and referenced that incident obviously Omar Artan who's denied access so

Yeah, it was interesting.

Quite lots of different aspects to it.

But I think it was another reminder really of actually just how kind of bonkers it is that we've got to this point on the eve of their first game.

Watching a long time.

Yeah, this was kind of the biggest shock, wasn't it?

I think so far, as we've seen, as Barry said, he's surprised at the result.

I definitely was as well.

And it didn't go down very well, I don't think, with some of the Turkey players.

And if you saw Ceanoglu, what he said before and afterwards.

Yeah, he said that we dominate the ball and

Yeah, but then afterwards he was interviewed again and he said, well, but we did, didn't we?

And I don't think that's ever a great look.

He lost 2-0 and I thought that was poor really.