Patrick Comerford
I have spent much of the day in London, meeting a writer fried from New Zealand, and now I’m on my way back to Milton Keynes, hoping to find an appropriate place in Stony Stratford this evening to join friends and neighbours watching the opening match in this year’s World Cup tournament, when the co-hosts Mexico plan South Africa.
Mexico is one of the three host nations, each staging its own opening ceremony ahead of its first match. Canada follows tomorrow night (Friday 12 June 2026), with its first game against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Toronto. The USA hosts the third and last opening ceremony on Saturday (13 June), before facing Paraguay in Los Angeles.
Scotland’s first match is against Haiti in Foxborough, Massachusetts in the far-too early hours of Sunday (2 am, 14 June), and England has to wait almost a week before playing Croatia in Dallas next Wednesday (17 June, 9 pm).
Doubtless, Trump will try to hijack the events, although his appearance at a major basketball game in New York was meet with Booing throughout the stadium – hopefully setting an example of how to welcome him to any World Cup games.
Today’s opening ceremony is in the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, the first stadium to host matches in three World Cups – it was there Maradona blamed it all on the ‘hand of God’ in 1986 and there Pelé passed to Carlos Alberto in 1970.
The opening ceremony in Canada takes place tomorrow at the BMO Field in Toronto while the opening ceremony for the US tomorrow when the USA and Paraguay play in the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, which also hosts the opening ceremony for the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028.
In addition, two extra ceremonies are planned for 4 July as part of the celebrations marking the 250th anniversary United States during the Last 16 fixtures in Philadelphia and Houston.
I still remember my enthusiasm in my childhood and teenage years for World Cup finals: in 1962, when Brazil beat Czechoslovakia 3-1 in Chile … in 1966, as a schoolboy finding a place in Ballinskelligs, Co Kerry, to watch England win dramatically 4-2 against West Germany in London … in 1970, when Brazil beat Italy 4-1 … And who from Ireland can forget Ireland’s performance in Italia 1990, reaching the quarter final and losing 1-0 to Italy in what every Irish fan still thinks of as a victory for heroes?
But, despite all my enthusiasm, I have decided that I am going to watch televised matches played olny in Mexico and Canada, but I am not going to watch any matches played at venues in the US, even though this means I am going to miss England’s three fixtures in the Group Stage, including the opening game against Croatia in Dallas next Wednesday, and the other games against Ghana in Boston, Panama in New York or New Jersey.
Of course, I never had any notion, ever, of going to the US, or any other World Cup competition for that matter. It has never been my idea of how to spend time or to spend money. But if I was so disposed, I have no doubt I would have been refused a visa. And how could I, in all conscience, feel safe on the streets of any city in the US when even US citizens, never mind foreigners, are not safe from the capricious actions of ICE?
And if, in conscience, I would not be safe and comfortable being in the US for this World Cup, why should I feel comfortable and safe at home, watching it from a distance?
But, while I may continue to watch matches staged in Mexico or Canada, here are ten good (or bad) reasons for not watching any fixtures at venues in the US:
1, Haiti has qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 52 years, and plays against Scotland on late on /early on Sunday Saturday in Boston, in the heart of the exiled Haitian community in Foxborough. The national stadium in Port-au-Prince has been controlled by armed gangs since 2024, so the team played every home qualifier in exile, and clinched a World Cup place with a 2-0 defeat of Nicaragua.
But Trump’s travel ban bars Haitian visitors from entering the US. The players and staff have been given an exemption, but their fans have no such exemption. This can only be put down to racism. During the 2024 election campaign Trump repeated baseless claims that illegal immigrants from Haiti have been eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. During ABC’s presidential debate, he claimed: ‘In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.’
2, Iran’s supporters are banned too. Iran’s first game is due to be against New Zealand in Los Angeles on Tuesday (16 June), but there are real fears that the team may never get there. Iran has qualified for the FIFA World Cup last March, but after months of war Iran has had to switch basecamps from Tucson, Arizona, to Tijuana in Mexico. Under the conditions of their visas, they will have to fly in and out of the US on matchday for each of their three group games. It emerged last Saturday that the US had denied visas to members of the team’s backroom staff, with 15 administrative officials denied entry.
Iran’s allocation of fan tickets for the group stage was revoked this week just days before the start of the tournament, and the US has cancelled all tickets that have been sold to Iran’s supporters. Since the US war against Iran began in February, the US military targets have included the Azadi Stadium in Tehran, where the national team trained.
3, Omar Artan, a FIFA-employed referee from Somalia and named as Africa’s best referee last year, was refused entry to the US at Miami International Airport despite having a valid travel visa and was deported to Istanbul.
4, The Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein was held and questioned for almost seven hours at O’Hare airport in Chicago, the team’s official photographer was sent back despite having a valid visa, and team members from Senegal and Uzbekistan were taken aside when they arrived and given full cavity searches.
5, The Swiss midfielder Breel Embolo was denied an entry visa – although Swiss authorities seem to have been successful in appealing against the decision.
6, The South African football team faced a 24-hour delay in their departure over a visa bungle, fans from Senegal and the Ivory Coast face restrictions despite qualifying for the tournament, and 90 per cent of Moroccan fans with tickets have been denied entry.
7, Tickets to the games are costing up to $8,000, wich means these are not fixtures for ordinary football fans. Instead, for whom the ‘beautiful game’ has became an ugly game and a game only for the rich.
8, Fans from 27 of the 48 nations taking part need a US visa, costing between $185 and $435. This represents wages that an average person in many countries in the Global South would take several months to earn. The US has a FIFA Priority Appointment Scheduling System (PASS), supposed to speed up the visa process for fans who have bought tickets through FIFA. But last month, about 150 fans in Ghana had their visa applications rejected.
9, Amnesty International is warning World Cup fans about the dangers involved in travelling to the US. Human Rights Watch has reported how an asylum seeker who attended the Club World Cup final last year in New Jersey with his children was arrested by ICE and deported.
10, FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino had no shame about giving a ‘peace prize’ to Trump, the petulant president who knows how to make demands but not how to keep commitments. When the US was bidding in 2018 to host this World Cup, Donald Trump personally wrote to FIFA promising that ‘all eligible athletes, officials, and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.’
It all amounts to a complete package of lies, humiliation, discrimination, racism, petty vindictiveness and an apparently planned and co-ordinated effort to humiliate black and Muslim players and team officials. So much for football being the ‘beautiful game’. So much for that FIFA ‘peace prize’ for Trump, who is using this world cup for propagamda in the same way Hitler used the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
These may be small gestures on my part. They may have no impact at all. And I don’t want anyone to interpret them or misrepresent them as anti-American protests. Nor do I want any family members or friends in the US to take offence, to take umbrage. I have had too much of the Trump regime, and I do not want Trump to have one more viewer who adds to his capacity to boast that this year’s World Cup was his World Cup and his success, his triumph.
