Los Angeles Stadium will host Iran vs New Zealand on Monday at 6 PM local time (Tuesday 2 AM BST), as the All Whites search for their first win at the World Cup against an Iran side looking to give their nation something to cheer about amid the ongoing conflict.

It has been 16 years since New Zealand were last at a World Cup, but despite going undefeated in the 2010 South Africa tournament, drawing all three of their group games, they have never won a match at a World Cup.

Much like Egypt, Darren Bazeley's side will surely go into this tournament with the sole focus of breaking that duck, and anything beyond that would be a massive bonus for the lowest-ranked side at the World Cup.

New Zealand were flawless in their qualification campaign, winning all five matches, scoring 29 and conceding just once along the way.

While the All Whites are very much a big fish in a small pond in Oceania, they have struggled to replicate their possession-based style of play against tougher opposition, winning just two games since qualifying at the end of March in 2025. 

While they recorded impressive wins against the Ivory Coast in June 2025 and a 4-1 win over Chile in March of this year, they have lost their nine other matches, failing to score in six of them. One of their defeats was a shocking 4-0 defeat to Haiti, far from an ideal way to prepare for the World Cup.

Coincidentally, these two sides were the second- and third-quickest teams to qualify for this summer's tournament, with Amir Ghalenoei's side qualifying one day before New Zealand, after losing just one of their 16 matches, and beating Uzbekistan to the top spot in the group stages.

Iran have historically struggled to score goals at World Cups, scoring the fewest goals per game of any team to have played in 15 or more games at the finals (0.72).

As Iran looks to advance from the group stages for the first time, Team Melli's star striker, Mehdi Taremi, will be looking to add to his 60 national team goals across 105 caps for his country.

Iran have won only three of their 18 World Cup matches and will likely need one more in this campaign to stand any chance of reaching the knockout stages for the very first time.

Their meeting on Monday will be just the third time that these two teams have met, with their most recent encounter coming 23 years ago, when Iran came out 3-0 winners over New Zealand in 2003.

The All Whites have suffered a big injury blow to their forward line just before their opening game, with midfielder Matt Garbett sitting out of the team's last training session on Sunday morning with a hamstring injury and is unlikely to feature in the opening Group G fixture, while the extent of his injury remains to be known.

The 24-year-old who plays for League One side Peterborough was expected to start on the right of New Zealand's attacking midfield trio after doing well against England in their 1-0 loss. Ryan Thomas is also not expected to play any part for the All Whites in the opening match.

Iran, on the other hand, is facing several injury issues. Former Brighton & Hove Albion winger Alireza Jahanbakhsh is set to miss Monday's fixture, a huge loss for Ghalenoei's side, while Dennis Eckert and Mehdi Torabi are both likely to miss out. Roozbeh Cheshmi could feature depending on his assessment before the encounter.

17 of Iran's 26-man squad play in Iran's domestic league, which was suspended in February, so this could have a huge impact on the players' sharpness going into the game. Add to the struggles Iran have had to go through in the lead-up to the tournament, New Zealand could spring a shock on the side that sits 65 places above the All Whites in the FIFA rankings.

Unfortunately, New Zealand's poor form coming into the tournament simply cannot be ignored. They simply cannot replicate their possession-based, dominant style of play that gave them so much success in Oceania against better sides they will face at the World Cup. 

They haven't scored in four of their last five games, and will have to adopt a much more defensive style of play, which will lead to Chris Wood being isolated up front against an Iranian team that conceded eight goals across 10 qualifying games, so they should have enough to deal with the All Whites' major attacking threat.

While they have only won one of their last six opening matches and tend to be slow out of the blocks, Iran should have too much firepower and defensive resilience to heavily limit any threat that comes from New Zealand, and Taremi's goal-scoring pedigree for Iran should see him fire his side to victory on the opening day.

Prediction: Iran 2 - 0 New Zealand