TEHRAN - Mehdi Mohammad Nabi, the secretary general of the Iranian football federation, said the new season of Iran Professional League (IPL) will start as scheduled.

The media reports suggest that the competition will be delayed due to COVID-10 pandemic.

The 2020/21 IPL season was originally scheduled to begin on Oct. 31 but the Iran’s Sports Medicine Federation requested a six-day delay in order to cut chain of coronavirus’ spread.

Now, Mohammad Nabi has said that the competition will start on Friday.

“The league will surely begin on Friday behind closed the doors. The competition will be held with stringent health protocols due to a coronavirus outbreak,” Mohammad Nabi said.

It will be IPL’s 20th edition since its foundation in 2001.

Persepolis are the most decorated team in the competition with six titles.

Iran’s daily tally of coronavirus deaths hit a record high of 434 on Sunday.

The deaths, announced by Health Ministry spokeswoman Sima Sadat Lari on state TV, take the national toll to 35,298. She said the number of confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 7,719 to 620,491.