{"id":10863,"date":"2026-03-19T00:03:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=10863"},"modified":"2026-03-19T00:03:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T00:03:16","slug":"iranian-footballers-return-home-after-dropping-australian-asylum-bids","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/?p=10863","title":{"rendered":"Iranian footballers return home after dropping Australian asylum bids"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Concerns grew about the team&#8217;s safety after footage emerged of a host on state TV calling them &#8220;traitors&#8221; who ought to be punished for their silence during the anthem on 2 March, days after the US and Israel began their war against Iran.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The players went on to sing the anthem at their next two matches before being eliminated &#8211; leading critics to believe they had been told to sing by government officials accompanying them during the tournament.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Australia&#8217;s Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke later confirmed five players who &#8220;wanted to be able to stay in Australia&#8221; had been escorted to a safe location by police, from the Gold Coast hotel where they had been staying.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Burke said he met the women at the safe location and signed off for their applications for humanitarian visas at about 01:30 local time &#8211; which would have given them leave to live, work and study in the country. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The BBC witnessed some of their minders running across the hotel to try to find them \u2013 but they had already gone.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Two more women later joined the group.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Concerns grew about the team&#8217;s safety after footage emerged of a host on state TV calling them &#8220;traitors&#8221; who ought to be punished for their silence during the anthem on 2 March, days after the US and Israel began their war against Iran. The players went on to sing the anthem at their next two<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10864,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10863\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/outdoorthrill.cfd\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}