{"id":723281,"date":"2026-01-27T03:21:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T03:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/723281\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T03:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T03:21:10","slug":"former-fifa-president-sepp-blatter-joins-calls-to-boycott-mens-world-cup-games-in-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/723281\/","title":{"rendered":"Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter joins calls to boycott men’s World Cup games in US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter is backing a proposed fan boycott of men’s World Cup matches in the United States because of the conduct of President Donald Trump and his administration at home and abroad.<\/p>\n

Mr Blatter, who has faced his own scandals, was the latest international soccer figure to call into question the suitability of the US as a host country.<\/p>\n

He called for the boycott in a post on X that supported Mark Pieth’s comments in an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund.<\/p>\n

US announces ‘major sporting event’ exemptions from broad visa bans<\/a><\/p>\n

The Trump administration reveals the sporting events that athletes, coaches and support staff can attend in the US despite recent visa bans.<\/p>\n

Mr Pieth, a Swiss lawyer specialising in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, chaired the Independent Governance Committee’s oversight of FIFA reform a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Mr Blatter was president of the world’s governing body for soccer from 1998-2015 and resigned amid an investigation into corruption.<\/p>\n

“If we consider everything we’ve discussed, there’s only one piece of advice for fans: Stay away from the USA!” Mr Pieth said in his interview with Der Bund.<\/p>\n

“You’ll see it better on TV anyway.<\/p>\n

“And upon arrival, fans should expect that if they don’t please the officials, they’ll be put straight on the next flight home. If they’re lucky.”<\/p>\n

In his X post, Mr Blatter quoted Mr Pieth and added, “I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup”.<\/p>\n

The United States is co-hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.<\/p>\n

Concerns about Trump’s approach<\/p>\n

The international soccer community’s concerns about the US stem from Mr Trump’s expansionist posture on Greenland, travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and immigration enforcement protesters in American cities, particularly Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

Sepp Blatter, Michel Platini cleared of fraud<\/a><\/p>\n

A Swiss judge finds FIFA boss Sepp Blatter’s explanation of how he came to pay\u00a0former UEFA president Michel Platini $3 million “credible”.<\/p>\n

Oke G\u00f6ttlich, one of the vice-presidents of the German soccer federation, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper in an interview on Friday that the time had come to seriously consider boycotting the World Cup.<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, travel plans for fans from two of the top soccer countries in Africa were thrown into disarray when the Trump administration announced a ban that would effectively bar people from Senegal and Ivory Coast from following their teams unless they already have visas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Trump cited “screening and vetting deficiencies” as the main reason for the suspensions.<\/p>\n

Fans from Iran and Haiti, two other countries that have qualified for the World Cup, will also be barred from entering the United States as well.<\/p>\n

They were included in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

AP<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter is backing a proposed fan boycott of men’s World Cup matches in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[13658,32,1512,94,215676,10031,49,978,659,1514],"class_list":{"0":"post-723281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-boycott","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-fifa","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-sepp-blatter","13":"tag-soccer","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-usa","17":"tag-world-cup"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115964915374867270","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}