{"id":493684,"date":"2026-06-15T10:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/493684\/"},"modified":"2026-06-15T10:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T10:46:09","slug":"racism-monitor-urges-fifa-to-remove-world-cup-official-over-white-supremacy-gesture-world-cup-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/493684\/","title":{"rendered":"Racism monitor urges Fifa to remove World Cup official over \u2018white supremacy\u2019 gesture | World Cup 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifa\u2019s discrimination monitor at the World Cup<\/a> called for a video assistant referee (VAR) to be removed for appearing to make a hand gesture resembling a white supremacist sign.<\/p>\n

When the official broadcast of Germany\u2019s opening game against Cura\u00e7ao<\/a> on Sunday cut pre-game to show the team of VAR officials, Shaun Evans from Australia made an \u201cOK\u201d symbol with his right hand in front of his right leg. Though the game was played in Houston, VAR officials work in Dallas at the World Cup broadcast centre. In 2019, the gesture \u2013 with thumb and forefinger touched in a circle and other fingers outstretched \u2013 was designated a hate symbol by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdvice from our experts is that the gesture used clearly resembles an upside down \u2018OK\u2019 hand symbol used as a \u2018white power\u2019 symbol in global far-right circles,\u201d the Fare network, a longtime partner of Fifa and Uefa, the European football governing body, to monitor racist and discriminatory chants, flags and symbols at international games, said in a statement. \u201cClearly this official should have no further role to play in this World Cup,\u201d Fare said in a statement, describing the gesture as \u201cneo-Nazi.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaun Evans from Australia makes an upside OK symbol with his right hand in front of his right leg, which is used as a \u201cwhite power\u201d symbol in global far-right circles. Photograph: BBC<\/p>\n

Fifa was asked for comment. In Australia, the Professional Football Referees<\/a> Association and the governing body Football Australia were contacted for comment.<\/p>\n

It was unclear if Evans, working at his first game at the World Cup, was making a political gesture or playing a children\u2019s game prank.<\/p>\n

The \u201cgotcha\u201d or \u201ccircle game\u201d is where someone flashes an upside down OK sign below their waist and punches in the shoulder anyone who looks at it. It was appropriated a decade ago as a signal for white supremacy that started as a hoax on the far-right online message board 4chan.<\/p>\n

In 2019 when the sign was designated as a hate symbol, Oren Segal, director of the ADL\u2019s Centre on Extremism, said context is key to interpreting whether an \u201cOK\u201d symbol is hateful or harmless. At the time, he said, \u201cthere is enough of a volume of use for hateful purposes that we felt it was important to add\u201d.<\/p>\n

Evans is among 30 VAR officials selected by Fifa to work at the World Cup being played in the United States, Canada and Mexico.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is a VAR supervisor using this symbol at a global football event at the very moment he knows the cameras are on him?\u201d Fare said. \u201cWe note that in the two subsequent games it appears TV directors have stopped introducing the VAR panel to the TV audience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fifa\u2019s discrimination monitor at the World Cup called for a video assistant referee (VAR) to be removed for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":493685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":["post-493684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=493684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/493684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/493685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=493684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=493684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=493684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}