Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Monday backed a proposed fan boycott of World Cup matches in the United States because of the conduct of President Donald Trump and his administration at home and abroad.<\/p>\n
Blatter was the latest international soccer figure to call into question the suitability of the United States as a host country. He called for the boycott in a post on X<\/a> that supported Mark Pieth’s comments in an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund<\/a>.<\/p>\n Pieth, a Swiss attorney specializing in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, chaired the Independent Governance Committee’s oversight of FIFA reform a decade ago. Blatter was president of the world’s governing body for soccer from 1998-2015; he resigned amid an investigation into corruption.<\/p>\n In his interview with Der Bund, Pieth said, \u201cIf we consider everything we\u2019ve discussed, there\u2019s only one piece of advice for fans: Stay away from the USA! You\u2019ll see it better on TV anyway. And upon arrival, fans should expect that if they don\u2019t please the officials, they\u2019ll be put straight on the next flight home. If they\u2019re lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n In his X post, Blatter quoted Pietha and added, \u201cI think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n The United States is co-hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.<\/p>\n The international soccer community’s concerns about the United States stem from Trump’s expansionist posture on Greenland, travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and immigration enforcement protestors in American cities, particularly Minneapolis.<\/p>\n Oke G\u00f6ttlich, one of the vice presidents of the German soccer federation, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper<\/a> in an interview on Friday that the time had come to seriously consider boycotting the World Cup<\/a>.<\/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<\/a> that would effectively bar people from Senegal and Ivory Coast from following their teams unless they already have visas. Trump cited \u201cscreening and vetting deficiencies\u201d<\/a> 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 be barred from entering the United States as well; they were included in the first iteration of the travel ban announced by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n