Iran’s national football team play a friendly game against five-time world champions Brazil next week in the United Arab Emirates, ISNA news agency reported Monday.

A spokesman of the Iranian Football Federation (FFI) told ISNA that the friendly will take place on October 6 or 7 in Abu Dhabi.

Abbad Torabian said that Brazil have committed to playing a strong team and claimed that Iran paid no money to the Brazilians for the game.

He did not say why the game is set to be held in the UAE and not in Iran.

Due to political problems and especially because of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s controversial remarks about Israel and the Holocaust, the FFI has had problems in the last five years finding suitable national teams ready to play friendlies against Iran.

Iran have so far had only one friendly game against a world champion and that was in 2004 in Tehran against Germany. The DFB team had reportedly promised Iran the friendly in return for its vote for Germany to be the host of the 2006 World Cup.

The scheduled friendly against Brazil, the first ever encounter between the two teams, is believed by observers to be due to friendly ties between the presidents of the two countries.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is one of the few foreign heads of state supporting Iran’s disputed nuclear programmes and even voted against the latest United Nations Security Council sanction resolution against Tehran.

Iran are currently attending the West Asian Football Federation Championship in the Jordanian capital of Amman but the main aim is the Asian Championship to be held in January 2011 in Qatar.