Former Spain international Joan Capdevila has made a plea to US President Donald Trump for help after he says he was denied a travel permit to enter the United States before Sunday’s World Cup final.<\/p>\n
Capdevila, 48, was part of the Spain team that defeated the Netherlands to win the 2010 World Cup final.<\/p>\n
The retired full-back was hoping to reunite with his former team-mates and watch Spain’s second World Cup final appearance when they take on Argentina at the MetLife Stadium on Sunday (20:00 BST).<\/p>\n
Visitors who want to travel to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa need to apply to the country’s Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), which Capdevila says has been denied.<\/p>\n
“I NEED HELP @realDonaldTrump!” Capdevila posted on X on Friday.<\/p>\n
“They just told me that I can’t travel to the final with my kids because my ESTA has been denied.”<\/p>\n
The former Villarreal and Deportivo defender added: “Can anyone help me with this? You have no idea how excited I was to be there with all my 2010 team-mates and this team to cheer them on.<\/p>\n
“I can’t believe they’re not letting me into the USA… and that I’ll miss a moment like this with my kids who love soccer so much.<\/p>\n
“If anyone knows how to fix this, I’ll be grateful to you for life.”<\/p>\n
Capdevila also called on Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, to help resolve his situation and tagged the Spanish government’s ministry of sport in his post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Spain international Joan Capdevila has made a plea to US President Donald Trump for help after he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-556166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}