2 hours ago
11
Omar Abdulkadir Artan was supposed to make history this week, becoming the first Somali referee to officiate at a World Cup. Instead, he’s watching from outside the US, denied entry without explanation by the Trump administration. Welcome to the most inclusive World Cup ever.
Fifa, the game’s governing body, is projecting revenues of $8.9bn (£6.7bn) from this tournament – double what the 2024 Olympics made. More teams: 48, up from 32. More matches: 104 over 39 days. More markets, just how they like it. This is good business.
But this much is also clear: not everyone is invited to the party. In the days preceding Thursday’s opening ceremony, the news has been of exclusion, disunity and segregation.
It is probably best to start with Artan, a Somali referee named Africa’s best male referee last year and Fifa accredited since 2018. Artan was gracious in spite of the circumstances. “I am very, very disappointed,” he told the New York Times, “I’m just simply a referee who’s trying to live his dream – the biggest dream of my life, to come to the World Cup.” He deserved it. Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, the president of Somalia, described him as “a symbol of inspiration for the new generation of Somalis.” That, evidently, is not enough for the Trump administration.
Andrew Giuliani, who leads the White House taskforce on the World Cup, said: “While I can’t go into the derog [derogatory information] on that, I can tell you it was the right decision by customs and border patrol and I support that decision.” After 24 hours of uproar, someone briefed CNN with the unverified claim that that the ref may have alleged links to “suspected members of terror organisations.”
Fifa forced South Africa, Germany and other recent World Cup hosts to promise that visas and minimal immigration interference would be guaranteed for all accredited officials, players and staff during the tournament. Why is the US exempt from that? The organisation’s response has been toothless: “Fifa is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications,” it said, “and has been informed by authorities that Mr Artan’s status will not be changed at present. A host government ultimately determines who receives a visa and who is admitted into their country.”
And so it is that, with Fifa’s connivance, those who would enjoy the so-called global game are wholly subject to Trumpian whim. The Iranian football federation said on Tuesday that the country’s allocation of fan tickets had been revoked, on top of the national team’s training base being moved from Arizona to Mexico City last month and visa denials for several backroom staff. Last week, the International Sports Press Association criticised the “long-standing and unacceptable problem for us journalists: the denial of entry visas to regularly accredited colleagues” in a letter addressed to Fifa’s media office from the association’s president, Gianni Merlo.
“There are many cases,” the letter continued. “Iranian colleagues, African colleagues, some of whom have been given single entries, so if their team goes to play in Canada or Mexico and they follow it, they can no longer return to the States. The cases are countless and, I repeat, unacceptable. Politicians always say that sport unites and builds bridges between young people in countries in conflict, but in this case, we are going in the opposite direction.”
This is an egregious error, setting back progress. A record 10 African countries are represented at this World Cup, a long way from the Eurocentric tournaments between 1938 and 1966 that failed to welcome a single African nation. Fifa can point to steps taken to redress the balance: South Africa hosting the competition in 2010, and Moroccan Said Belqola and South African Achmat Salie becoming the first Africans to take charge of a World Cup final in 1998. The organisation will also note that it is a net funder of the African game, having poured over $1.2bn into infrastructure, pitches and youth development academies since 2016.
But expanding the tournament is also a massive commercial exercise designed to unlock billions in new revenue while securing the political loyalty of Africa’s 54 voting nations, who represent 25% of Fifa’s membership. And right now, on the evidence of what is unfolding in North America, they are an afterthought.
So what does Fifa do about a World Cup in which the influence of Donald Trump – a man its leaders so publicly sought to cultivate – begins to affect the very architecture of their showpiece event? What does the organisation’s head, Gianni Infantino, however busy he may be organising absurd baubles for Trump or fighting legal threats from his own predecessor, say or do in moments like this?
He does what he is doing: he effectively shrugs and counts the dollars, measures the prestige growth and pretends all is well while the house catches fire. He seeks African expansion while willingly throwing certain nations under the bus for the prestige of a US World Cup. The Fifa he leads chooses complicity over courage.
The governing body should find its voice, and it would do well to heed the words of Somali officials following the unconscionable barring of Artan from this premier stage. “Preventing [Artan] undermines football’s commitment to fairness, merit, and the spirit of fair play,” they said.
And they are right: Fifa should honour that commitment. But right now, honour is in short supply.
-
Morgan Ofori is a reporter, blogger and subeditor for the Guardian’s The Long Wave
