Coming To America For The World Cup? America Would Prefer Some Of You F*ck Off

Not us, we love you. But our elected officials suck.

A big special boy with his big special medal and his big special trophy.

God, do we love the World Cup, which kicks off Thursday with a match between Mexico and South Africa. For starters, the Cup is one of those sporting events that is considered perfectly acceptable to watch while drinking pints in a bar at 8 A.M. Also, there is some other stuff that’s cool about it, we guess. But mostly it is the drinking at 8 A.M. thing.

Ha ha, we kid, we don’t need the World Cup as an excuse to pop open several morning beers. But the tournament truly is one of the great global competitions. Entire countries get wrapped up in cheering their national team. Four years ago, the estimated worldwide television audience for the championship match between Argentina and France was 1.5 billion. Fans travel from all over the world to whatever country is hosting the Cup, even if it’s an authoritarian nation ruled by the most corrupt and dictatorial autocrats or religious fanatics, like Russia in 2018 or Qatar in 2022 or the United States in 2026.

Yes, the United States. Thanks to the xenophobes and bigots who have been fucking up America’s reputation as a nice free country for foreigners to visit or move to, this year’s World Cup already has a body count of sorts. Not literal dead bodies, but foreigners who have been denied entry to the country and so cannot participate in the Cup or go wherever they want to cheer on their team.

The latest casualty is Omar Artan of Somalia. Artan was selected by FIFA to be one of the 52 referees who will work World Cup matches. He is by all accounts a highly respected ref who was named referee of the year in 2025 for the entire continent of Africa. He is a celebrity in Somalia, where he is “lionized.”

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Artan secured his proper papers in Nairobi last week, flew on to Istanbul and then to Miami. That was when he was taken aside by border agents and questioned overnight for 11 fucking hours. Then he was put in a holding cell for a few more hours. Then he was ignominiously shoved onto a return flight to Istanbul, having been denied entrance to the United States for unknown reasons.

Did we say unknown reasons? We meant racism, it’s always the racism:

Mr. Artan said that border officials had asked him why he had come to the United States and about politics in Somalia. Those questions, Mr. Artan said, included many about the militant group Al Shabab, which controls parts of Somalia and which has fought a yearslong insurgency against the government.

Sure. Everyone in Somalia, all 20 million or so of them, is a member of Al Shabab. That’s just common sense.

Artan is reportedly devastated, as he had been training for this opportunity, including taking classes in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. All that down the drain because some CBP officer at the Miami airport is an asshole. Shameful.

We already know how our giant wet baby of a president feels about Somalia, an attitude shared by the morons he has hired into his administration. Dr. Oz was on Fox News being hugely racist about Somalians just on Tuesday morning:

Being a racist is the worst thing you can be in other states too! Maybe not some of the Southern ones, but others! Someone should mention that to Dr. Brain Genius there.

Artan is one person. But the entire Iranian team and members of its entourage also got screwed over because of our bigoted immigration authorities. The team had planned to make its home base for the tournament in Tucson. Which made sense, since Iran has two group matches in Los Angeles and a third in Seattle between June 15 and June 26.

But the United States objected because it does not want the Iranians to spend that much time here, or sneak in some Revolutionary Guard members disguised as the team’s kit men or something. Luckily Mexico is right next door and co-hosting the Cup, and the Mexicans don’t suck as much as we do. So now the team will be based in Tijuana and allowed to fly into America only one day before its first match and two days before its next two.

And even that may be in jeopardy for some members of the team’s delegation and support staff, who as of Monday had reportedly not been issued visas by the US.

Even Iranian fans in the US may be getting screwed over. According to ESPN, FIFA has yanked Iran’s ticket allocation for its matches:

Each federation for the 48 teams taking part is entitled to receive and distribute 8% of stadium capacity at the World Cup, adding up to several thousands of tickets for each game. [...]

“However, in an unexpected move, the allocation granted to Iran’s football federation has been withdrawn, and under the current circumstances the federation is unable to offer even a single ticket to national team supporters,” the federation said.

Iranian fans weren’t going to be granted visas to attend the World Cup anyway. Remember how when it kicked off this dumb war the Trump administration tried to claim its problem was with the ruling regime, not the Iranian people it hoped to free from the regime’s grasp? What better way to convince the people we are at war with their government and not them than telling them they are not welcome to come over for World Cup matches?

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And it’s not just Iranian tourists. Last week, Britain’s The Times reported that for some unknown reason, many Scottish fans had suddenly had their authorizations to travel here yanked. No one can figure out why. Maybe Donald Trump is still mad the country put an offshore wind farm within sight of his golf club there?

According to The Times, Scottish fans have been very careful for months to not offend the US ever since our government announced it would be checking social media as part of its authorization process:

“Scotland fans have been very careful with their use of social media and self-policing,” said Hamish Husband, a spokesman for the Association of Tartan Army Clubs. “Fans I’ve spoken to are very mindful about what they post. It’s not about being pro or anti-America, it’s simply not mentioning America.”

We’re purely speculating here, but given our government, we can’t discount the likelihood that any Scot who has posted, say, in support of the Palestinians is getting extra vetting and maybe not being allowed in for the tournament because of it. We’re so glad we put all these free speech warriors back in power!

One might be asking, where is FIFA in all of this? Why is FIFA not screaming bloody murder about fairness and sports being a great uniter of people or some other bullshit? Well, FIFA don’t wanna:

FIFA confirmed in a statement that Mr. Artan had been denied entry, and said he would not be able to officiate at the World Cup. “FIFA is not involved in host country immigration processes, including visa adjudications, and has been informed by authorities that Mr. Artan’s status will not be changed at present.”

Why Mr. Artan can’t be assigned to a match in Mexico or Canada, where 25 percent of group play will occur, is beyond us. FIFA took the same “we don’t get involved with hosts’ visa decisions” with the Iranian team’s situation as well.

Which is a shame, because what was then the point of FIFA President Gianni Infantino sucking up to Donald Trump for the last year? What was the point of holding the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center, which back then still had Trump’s name on it? What was the point of giving our toddler president a ridiculous, made-up peace prize after he had a tantrum over not winning the Nobel?

In short, what was the point of all of that if it didn’t translate to influence with the US government when it is treating foreigners traveling here for the World Cup like utter ass?

Well, you can’t say the US hasn’t been warning everyone to not expect us to be gracious hosts. Which also explains why the US has had a massive drop in tourism in general over the last year, and why hotels and AirBnbs in host cities are not seeing nearly the reservations they had hoped for.

If America ever gets another shot at hosting a World Cup, it is our considered opinion that we should not be such dicks about it.

[New York Times / The Times / ESPN / AP]

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