Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter voiced support on Monday for calls to boycott World Cup matches in the United States, urging fans to protest against the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration, both domestically and internationally.
“For the fans, there’s only one piece of advice: stay away from the USA!” Blatter wrote in a post on social media platform X, News.Az reports, citing France24.
Blatter called for the boycott in a post quoting comments by Swiss attorney Mark Pieth, an attorney specialising in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, in an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund. Pieth 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.
In his interview, Pieth said warned of the dangers of travelling to the United States.
“If we consider everything we’ve discussed, there’s only one piece of advice for fans: Stay away from the USA! You’ll see it better on TV anyway. 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.”
Blatter quoted Pieth and added: “I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup.”
The United States is co-hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.
The international soccer community’s concerns about the United States stem from Trump’s expansionist posture on Greenland, and travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and immigration enforcement protesters in American cities.
Blatter’s statement comes days after US citizen Alex Pretti was shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
Oke Göttlich, 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.
Travel plans for fans from two of the top soccer countries in Africa were thrown into disarray in December, when the Trump administration announced an expanded ban that would effectively bar people from Senegal and Ivory Coast following their teams unless they already have visas. Trump cited “screening and vetting deficiencies” as the main reason for the suspensions.
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.
