Again, I think learning more about this is, if possible, where useful information will come. FIFA can (accurately) say the host nation(s) reserve the ultimate right to admit or not admit participants. But what role does FIFA play in ensuring its own personnel and officials have the requisite documents? For participating delegations, the federation takes control and doesn't, say, leave it to chance that certain star players have their papers in order. But for individual referees? You would think/hope FIFA plays a direct guiding role. I'd be very suprised if things were left to the referees themselves to work in concert with their national governments. Maybe that's ultimately what happened here once Artan started to hit a roadblock. But it still doesn't answer the question of when and how much FIFA was involved along the way.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/09/....o1A.zByt.QoERofKRjUU0&smid=nytcore-ios-share Maybe read this article before assuming it was legitimate to refuse entry. He says he had all the right documents and was rejected after 11 hours of interrogation where he was questioned about the political situation in Somalia.
So the BBC has reporting that confirms a Somali embassy official stating that he was issued a diplomatic passport. Yet that reporting is not incluced in the NYT piece (indeed, the word "diplomatic" isn't included at all). I'm sorry, but this is 90%+ "interview with Artan," rather than reporting. He might be telling the truth and I have no doubt that there was a prolonged interrogation. But to determine whether a refusal of entry was legitimate or illegitimate based almost entirely on the say-so of the person denied entry violates like some of the first principles I learned about news consumption. The New York Times should do better here. If the BBC can get information from other relevant officials, surely the NYT could, too. And again, even the certain assertion that he would have been the first Somali to referee a game shows a level of laziness that I wish didn't exist at serious news outlets. It was actually very likely Artan was never going to referee a game even if he was admitted.
Man the NY Times has taken a nose dive if that blatant hit piece from a Somali reporter was allowed to be published. Yikes.
Iran supposedly are banned from staying in the US. They will be required to fly in/fly out day of their matches. Flying on gamedays sucks, but is negligible Tijuana to LA (though, their search can be problematic upon arrival), but they will be at a serious disadvantage for their Seattle match and potentially any match after that.
Troubling you’d assume the reporter was Somali (because he’s black?). He’s not. He’s British, he’s the New York Times’ East Africa Bureau Chief, he was educated in London, and he’s been a reporter for the NYT and Reuters for 20+ years. I think I’m done with this topic. Feel free to continue twisting yourselves into knots to avoid the most obvious explanation for what happened here.
Boy, did I open up a can of worms here by broaching this topic (though if I hadn't done it, someone else probably would have . . . .).
I know you've said you're done, but I would point out I didn't go there and wouldn't go there. I would ask, though, why he didn't or couldn't include the material fact from a Somali official that the BBC could. You don't think the use of a diplomatic passport, admitted to by Somali officials, is relevant to piecing together what happened here? Does the fact that Artan seems to be asserting something in an interview that is contradicted by his own government in separate reporting not relevant? I can't stress enough how I believe there are likely errors and mistakes and bad judgment on all sides here. I'm not looking to absolve the U.S. government. But I am interested in looking at this without a pre-determined opinion.
From the reporting, it seems pretty clear that Artan and Co. attempted or seemed to exhaust all options and couldn't get through and decided to go with the diplomatic passport route. Now, did Artan and everyone else in Somalia decide to go rogue without consulting FIFA about this? It seems like it. "Hey, I'm not getting any traction here with my visa, I'm going to try via the diplomatic passport route. You think that is a good idea?"
I don't think the poster meant that all participating nations should be given carte blanche to enter the country as they please without any vetting. There obviously should be vetting, but it shouldn't be like this. Look at the Senegal team. Has there ever been a World Cup team that had their plain flipped inside out upon landing in the host country? It's ridiculous and embarrassing. Why not everyone else then? However, it is just plainly understood that you have to loosen the restrictions and make it easier to get into the country especially for active participants. Getting a visa for fans should be harder than for players and officials, but it still should be easier than in non-World Cup years. That's just an understood social contract. If you don't like it then don't host. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If the Artan incident was the only incident, I really don't think this would be that big of a deal. Stuff happens and life isn't fair. But we have had multiple people from multiple countries facing major serious hurdles to get into an event call the "World Cup.
So what should he have done, given the tournament starts in a few days and he still wasn't being allowed in.
Mystery solved! It's a salute to Miami, the referee host city. Collina explains here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1886731362018999
This Omar Artan drama, combined with the logistics discussion in the other thread, has me wondering how all this stuff works out in regular international football (World Cup qualifiers and club international matches). The more I think about it the more I’m surprised we don’t ever notice major issues like a referee not being able to make it into a country to do a match. Do referees have pre-prepared visas for every country they could possibly travel to within their continental competition? Because for some countries this could take more than a few weeks’ time. I always just assumed that there were regular fast-track protocols all over the world for people engaged in international sport. It’s embarrassing that the US just seems significantly less reliable in this ‘freedom of movement’ than any of the African nations (some of which are are considered extremely authoritarian) to which Artan has been assigned.
A couple of things. You are underestimating just how difficult it is to get into the United States as a tourist let alone for any type of work situation. The United States is one of the hardest countries to get into as a tourist. I think it only allows visa free entry from 42 countries. I have multiple passports as I'm from the former Yugoslavia, and I can travel freely to most of the world without having to go through a visa process. In Europe almost everyone is within the European Union so travel is freely permitted like if you're going from California to Texas. Even if you're not part of the EU, almost every EU country allows non-EU countries visa free travel (even a parastate has visa free travel to almost all EU states except the non-recognizers I think). I would imagine traveling within Africa is pretty straightforward. You just need a passport.
It literally says at the bottom that the contributing reporter was Hussein Mohamed, a Somali reporter. Not that I'm going to let Bigg (who you're referring to) off the hook. It's just as bad that he decided to attach his name to this. I mean the whole point of my post was how anybody at the NY times thought it was appropriate to use this article. Bigg and his bosses are the problem here, not the Somali reporter.
I humbly suggest that we've exhausted this conversation, at least until new (and reliable) information is released. I have my own priors here, which color my view, but I don't see much value in adding anything additional to the discussion.
I don't expect a response from FIFA of any kind here or any punishment, but there is just so much hypocrisy from everyone here. I don't expect actions from anyone, but I was hoping that there would be some public condemnation from people that matter. In somewhat of a just world, Infantino would at least have the courage to come out and criticize or condemn the United States after the World Cup, but he will instead go on about how it was "the best World Cup ever." I remember when the 2006 World Cup was to be held in Germany and there were concerns about racist abuse at the stadiums. Blatter, in an interview, said that if that happened FIFA would "pack up and leave." Would they have done that? Probably not, but at least he was taking a stand (even if it was completely not realistic and fake). There is none of that with Infantino. FIFA had no issue stripping Indonesia of a youth World Cup because they refused to host Israel, but they won't even come out and criticize the US. UEFA banned Russia and stripped St. Petersburg of the CL Final as soon as the first bomb was dropped in Ukraine. The best generation of players that Yugoslavia ever had got kicked out of the Euros in 1992 and banned from the '94 World Cup due to the civil wars occurring in Yugoslavia. Ireland is now getting a home game moved to a neutral country against Ireland because of boycotts/protests by Irish fans/public against playing the game against Israel. Israel is occupying parts of Lebanon and the United States has bombed countless countries over the years and no sporting sanction. I can go on and on and I know why. But the galling thing is just the lack of any conviction from European leaders about this.
Not to mention most likely knowing all the bad publicity this would receive. The pres is manipulative and oft a step or two out in front of others' next moves. I seriously doubt this is a calculated jab at anyone or any country.
Well, I don't think there's evidence that "bad publicity" in certain legacy outlets is a (dis-)motiviating factor the way it used to be. If anything, the ability to build a narrative and signal to certain constituencies that you (read, the administration) don't care what certain media outlets think is an argument for these sort of controversies being a net positive. But that starts to get way afield from what should be the overall or fundamental topics at hand here. In short for me, I'm not naive enough to think that this whole thing doesn't stem, in some way, from administration policies. At the same time, there's enough evidence to illustrate Artan did something unorthodox here (morally/legally just or not) and that should be part of any comprehensive and fair story; putting all of this on the U.S. government and politics generally seems lazy. And, finally, FIFA's role in all this is, to me, simultaneously the most interesting and least reported.
I have not seen anyone claim he is a terrorist. Blaming racism is just lazy and to those of us who have professional experience in these fields, such appeals come across about as ignorant as when a fanboy comes into this forum to bitch about referees because their team lost. Their ignorance is worn as a badge. Somalia was a failed state from 1991 to 2013. Getting your visa approved has always been difficult and when approving visas, the state department focused more on family immigration than on short term non-immigrant visa approvals. Even with a semi-functioning Somali government, the US doesn't consider Somalia safe enough to re-open the consular affairs section of the embassy. This has nothing to do with racism and has been consistent since Obama re-established diplomatic relations in 2013. Over the past 20 years, non-immigrant B visa rejection rates increased from about 54% under Bush to 65% under Obama, 80% under Trump and 76% under Biden. Trump 2 has continued this pattern. The highest rejection year was 2022 at 91% of applications rejected under Biden. So yes, it's tough to get a visa as a Somalian to begin with, but it has nothing to do with race. It has everything to do with the fact that Somalia is a "fragile" state that has a barely functioning national government which makes vetting individuals difficult. And then when that individual shows up with a Diplomatic passport, there shouldn't be any surprise that CBP interviews him and then sends him back. And this doesn't even get into whether there were issues that came up during vetting. Yeah, it sucks to get invited but not get to do it, but race has nothing to do with it.
Dale Johnson, man. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/articles/clyr6drdl79o? Repeats the false talking point that he's Africa's best referee. Asserts he's part of "FIFA's own delegation," which just simply isn't true in any sense of the word and likely a root of this problem in the first place. Doesn't even suggest that Artan was there as a fourth, as he didn't have his own trio (indeed, the fact that no one is talking about his ARs and their plight in this moment should be a dead giveaway). Doesn't mention "diplomatic passport" at all, despite it being in his own publication's reporting. For those new to the Referee boards, this isn't actually a post about Artan from my perspective. It's about Dale Johnson's consistent ability to bring less than nothing to the table.
Based on the rest of your post I'm assuming that "just so much hypocrisy from everyone here" means FIFA et al and not literally everyone here in this forum?