Other…

This ^^^

That said, sure, it was on social media. But should reporters be banned from asking questions out loud?

 

The Guardian has a few excellent articles on refereeing at the World Cup - hopefully they will have more like this.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/08/highs-lows-being-world-cup-referee

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...who-will-be-at-the-var-monitor-this-world-cup

 

Also, some less-than-excellent reporting from the same paper.

https://www.theguardian.com/footbal...mar-artan-refused-access-to-the-united-states

I wanted to look at the last sentence of this article, which I think can be most charitably called misleading.

The Swiss midfielder Breel Embolo was also denied an entry visa last week, but Swiss authorities said they had successfully appealed against the decision.

This is discussed under the heading of "...travel issues, long flagged as a potential risk under the anti-immigration Trump administration."

here is an excellent summary from the English language platform of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation:

...
Embolo was denied boarding of the team’s flight on Tuesday from Zurich to Los Angeles because his authorisation to travel (ESTA) was blocked at the last minute by US authorities.

They reportedly wanted to check about a case that involved a criminal conviction. Embolo has a conviction that became binding this year. He was charged after an altercation in Basel city centre in 2018 and his guilty verdict was upheld at appeal last September.
....

The Associated Press said on Thursday that Embolo had been denied boarding of the team’s flight because his ESTA was blocked by US authorities who wanted to verify that the incident was non-violent.

To secure his entry to the US the 29-year-old football star had to go to the US Embassy in Bern to submit an emergency visa application. His application was “processed as a priority”, the SFA said.
...

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/cultur...-gets-us-visa-to-travel-to-world-cup/91532865

I don't know how much of a parallel (if any) there is between the Artan situation and this one, however it stuck out to me for some reason.

 

I think it simply shows that in this day and age you will be screened before you are allowed to enter the US (and most other developed countries). A criminal conviction is going to get picked up and needs to be addressed. Just like when we do our background checks.

But the ESTA reference is interesting because Artan didn’t trigger one. So I am thinking that the Somali Embassy in Nairobi probably issued the Diplomatic passport for him and sent it over to the US Consulate with a generic he is going to the United States on behalf of the Somali government to participate in some type of government event. A G visa gets issued and off he goes. Except when he arrives and is going through inspection he says he’s here to referee in the FIFA World Cup which is not a government event and FIFA is not on the list of government organizations that qualify for G visas and refereeing is not related to diplomatic or government duties.

Athletes should be entering on a P-1A visa for high achieving international athletes. And refs, coaches and trainers come in on P-1S.

P1A and P1S visas are not subject to the current ban, so that shouldn’t have been an issue if he had gone down that path unless there was something that came up in the vetting process if he applied for one.

Or - especially if he didn’t have filing support from FIFA, the Somalian government may have just told him they would send him on a diplomatic passport bc they assumed it would make it easier (and judging by the bots going after my twitter post tonight that’s what a lot of African accounts think.) Apparently it’s common for runners to be made “ambassadors” and given diplomatic passports in many African and Caribbean countries. Heck. That may even be how they do it over in Africa for referees. ‍♂️

 

ESPN now reporting a U.S. official refused admission due to "association with suspected members of terror organizations".

Which sounds like a whole lot of CYA from our government.

 

If an NBA player gets in a fight in Toronto, do you think U.S. officials are going to stop him from disembarking in Dallas?

 

I think it is pretty clear that Korea-Czech tomorrow is being used as a sounding board for the Egyptian referee Amin, because I was quite sure that (indeed) Ghorbal was going to get it.

So this question can probably be better answered in 48hrs or so!

 

I don't know - maybe? I think it depends on the details

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5147456/2023/12/18/hornets-miles-bridges-out-raptors/

 

I don’t see it as CYA. I take much of what the admin claims with a big grain of salt, but he clearly had issues with getting past the vetting for his P-1S visa and tried the diplomatic path which raised more red flags.

 

Yep, maybe we can stop the diplomatic passport BS now. Doesn’t sound like that has anything to do with it.

 

The head of the US World Cup task force is asked why Omar Artan was denied entry.

He says people communicating with bad actors planning harm against the US wont be admitted

He's then asked, was Artan communicating with bad actors & who were they?

He says he can't talk about it pic.twitter.com/rOwT43oeGy

— Saul Staniforth (@SaulStaniforth) June 10, 2026

Straight from the government’s liaison with FIFA: they kept him out for “communicating with bad actors,” and refused to provide any details. Not because of a diplomatic passport.

Does anyone really believe this guy posed any risk of committing a terrorist attack while in the country for a few weeks to referee the World Cup? Because that’s the only basis they are offering, and it’s ridiculous on its face. Completely shameful

 

You can tweak the hypothetical if you like. It's a very rare situation -- such as the Miles Bridges situation mentioned above, and it's worth noting that Bridges has since been cleared to play -- in which either the US or Canada takes action when an MLB, NBA or NHL player (many of whom in all three leagues are neither American nor Canadian) needs to cross the border.

But to bring it back to Embolo -- you've argued, as I was also going to argue before you beat me to it, that it seems someone somewhere has dropped the ball in the case of Africa's not-really-top referee. If everyone (FIFA, team officials, US customs) was on the ball, this would've been handled much sooner than it was.

So it could be FIFA or team officials failing to be pro-active. Or it could be customs agents flexing their muscles just for fun. (FWIW, I actually know one person at ICE, and he couldn't be a nicer guy. He was not a recent hire.)

I think the NBA example shows what happens when people *are* on the ball and figuring things out before they become a problem. (In Bridges' case, his denial was over a recent no-contest plea, and it was sorted out so that he could resume border crossings.)

 

Not to punch downward at Somalia, but I'd imagine it's difficult not to communicate with bad actors there.

(Or here, for that matter. I think a lot of us communicate with bad actors if we write our members of Congress.)

 

Right. Exactly. Huge chunks of the country are controlled by Al-Shabab, which the United States has labeled a terrorist group. Merely “communicating” with someone in those groups cannot be a legitimate excuse for keeping a respected international referee out of the country, any more than it would excuse keeping the Iranian players out (all of whom have communicated with IRGC members)

 

ok just to try and change the subject:

How much will referees get paid for the World Cup? - Yahoo Sports

 

Hmm. That may just stir the pot . . .

 

I hesitate to add anything to the Artan issue, but for those who might be interested, The Athletic is quoting Democratic Congressman Rick Larsen in an article:

“When I got word of it, I thought FIFA needs to step in here and the White House Task Force needs to be more aggressive about communicating what is going on here,” Democratic Congressman Rick Larsen, who represents Washington’s second congressional district, told The Athletic. “Is this isolated or more broad-based? It clearly needed answers.

“I will just say this. In the last 24 hours, I received information that unfortunately for this particular individual, as a non-US national, he seems to have been treated like any other non-US national and ran into some problems at the border and port of entry that sound legitimate from my understanding.

“The CBP (Customs and Border Protection) decision was probably the right one in this particular case. I am not in a position (to share more). I think CBP has the authority to look at people’s phones and communications and it seems they determined that some communications in this particular person’s devices were concerning enough to deny him entry.”​

I'm not familiar with Larsen. I understand he is a moderate Democrat who voted to impeach Trump, so he does not seem to be an apologist for the administration. It sounds like immigration privacy issues may mean that we never have enough facts to fully evaluate the actions that took place here.

 

I guess that’s kind of the problem though? If he got treated like anyone else, it’s not surprising he got rejected because they reject Somalis all the time. The whole point of travel permissions for major events like this is that you are *not* supposed to treat the participants like everyone else. You are supposed to let them in unless there is an extraordinarily compelling reason not to do so

 

Maybe they changed it for this World Cup, but I believe that for previous World Cups everyone got paid the same whether they did one game or went on to do the Final?

I'm skeptical that they are giving bonuses if you go further in the tournament. Maybe that is a change for this one.

No one is refereeing for free, but the World Cup is truly not about the money for the referees and FIFA and tries to make it so by paying everyone the same.

 

Rick Larsen is the representative for the district where I grew up (though he took office 8 years after I moved to Seattle). He's not one who would tote water for this administration, even if he's more conservative than a number of Democrats.

 

I purposely stayed out of this conversation because there is nothing for me to gain as I've been reading good points both sides have made since the news came out. But once I see Rudy Giuliani's kid making unsubstantiated claims, that's pretty much all I need to know.

Does this mean FIFA/Infantino will now investigate who these shady characters he's been with? Were they aware of this before and kept assigning him? Also, other nations he's flown to had no problem and didn't know he was "communicating with bad actors".

 

It’s fine to take what the WH spokesman says with a bit of skepticism. But to dismiss it when a senior Democrat with no desire to carry water for this Admin weighs in and says he thinks CBP got this right just perpetuates the tribalism.

 

Sorry man, two wrongs don't make a right: bypassing visa controls via a diplomatic passport gets you in trouble. Why did Artan go that route if he had a US non-immigrant visa, as he now claims? It makes no sense.

When US entry is denied, DHS staff provide denial paperwork, plus a date for allowed re-entry. On the few interviews I have read from Artan, he omits the denial reason he received. When he applied for a US non-visitor visa, he must have provided a passport. Why did he switch to a diplomatic passport after securing his US visa? Makes no sense.

Any immigration officer will suspect someone is hiding travel history if they present a different passport number, unlinked to their original visa application. Then comes those questions in that room: where did you travel with your old passport? who did you meet in those travels?

DHS says Artan contacted dangerous individuals. Whether true or not, Artan was careless to show his diplomatic passport on social media before flying in. Really dude? You are struggling with US entry, and you publish a photo of your *golden entry doc*? Did he think DHS would like and subscribe?

Artan is now among other WC would-be visitors who were denied US entry. Look at those UEFA fans whose express visas were revoked prior to entering US territory. If DHS staff find something to keep you out, then you are done.

FIFA dropped Artan as fast as that Dutch referee whose sexual crime case was dismissed. That's how loyal FIFA is with WC referees.

 

Neither the government nor Artan has suggested that the diplomatic passport has anything to do with why he was denied entry. So maybe we can all stop pointing to that. At this point, it seems clear that it wasn’t the reason