TEHRAN - The statutes of the Football Federation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (FFIRI) has been a significant and seemingly unsolvable challenge in the country's football during the recent years.

From time to time, the FFIRI's statutes turned to an important subject and then is postponed again as the football federation officials try to buy time by creating a new challenge.

The FFIRI Assembly was canceled on March 15, 2020, because FIFA had objections to the statutes and ordered the federation to solve the problem-making parts.

The story of the FFIRI's statues goes back to many years ago. In 2007, the statutes was drafted in the football federation, which was governed by the Transitional Committee. It was approved by the government and it sent to FIFA. In 2011, the federation amended the statutes. However, it became clear that the statutes had legal problems.

FIFA and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) have emphasized in the recent years that FFIRI must be amended.

After presenting several drafts and resolving FIFA's objections, Iran football federation finally managed to get the statutes’ approval from FIFA in 2021.

However, FIFA gave the FFIRI one year time, until March 1, 2022, to change the nature of the federation to “non-governmental” and private organization in the statutes.

The federation, led by Shahaboddin Azizi Khadem, former president of the FFIRI, did not take any practical action in this regard during the past year.

Apart from the approval of the Assembly, FIFA, and the government, the statutes also need to be approved in the Parliament, for which no other effort was made except for various interviews by the officials of the previous federation, discussions that ignited the fire of disagreement and delayed the process of approving the statutes.

March 1, 2022, has passed, and the problem of the FFIRI statutes persists. With the removal of Azizi Khadem, everything in the process backed to the drawing board, and the issue of buying time until next year is raised again by the new officials of the federation.

Now the officials of the current federation (especially the board of directors) are under scrutiny by the Iranian football community over the issue of finalizing the FFIRI statutes.