We all knew these situations were going to happen, and so did FIFA. Yet they still allowed the World Cup to go ahead in the U.S. They are not receiving anywhere near the level of scrutiny they should.
The United States has denied a visa for Iran's national team manager Mehdi Mohammadnabi.
He will be barred entering the U.S. for their the Fifa #WorldCup 2026 matches.
He & others also denied visas will travel to the team camp in Mexico whilst efforts to obtain visas continue.
🚨🚨| JUST IN: Iraq's Aymen Hussein was held for 𝟕 𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐑𝐒 by US authorities upon arrival in Chicago with the national squad for the FIFA World Cup. 😳🇮🇶
He was the only one that was held up by the authorities for the interrogation.
[@lequipe]
They're presenting the granting of visas as some kind of generous move. It's your obligation as hosts to grant visas, in fact if anything you've failed to uphold your obligations as hosts by waiting this long to grant visas and creating other limitations for the Iranian team.
Félicitations à la FIFA pour avoir attribué la Coupe du Monde à un pays capable de retenir pendant 7 heures un joueur qui n’a jamais fait parler de lui autrement que par ses performances sur le terrain.
Quand le meilleur buteur de l’Irak, qualifié pour le plus grand événement sportif de la planète, peut être traité comme un suspect à son arrivée, difficile de ne pas s’interroger sur l’accueil qui sera réservé à certaines sélections (Iran) et à leurs supporters.
Pendant des années, chaque aspect de l’organisation au Qatar a été scruté, commenté et critiqué. J’espère que les États-Unis feront l’objet du même niveau d’exigence et de la même couverture médiatique.
Bravo, Monsieur Infantino.
Everyone can freely speak about players from other clubs like this, and do it openly. But journalists can't even do their job and report that Barcelona is interested in someone without everyone losing their shit collectively. Interesting.
The US has refused to host Iran's national team for the World Cup even though they have to play all their games there
Which means they're based in Tijuana and will have to fly on the day of their games
I've never heard of this kind of discrimination in World Cup history
- Quieres a Kounde, el Sevilla monta un escandalo.
- Vas por Joan García, el Espanyol y su afición rabia tela y amenazan al jugador.
- Intentas fichar a Nico, el Atheltic llama a Tebas y a la liga.
- Vas por Julian y el Atleti se pega la chinada del siglo.
Qué tortura de liga.
Football fans are hypocrites.
When PSG refused to sell Mbappé and Real Madrid kept trying to convince his family not to sign a new contract so he could join for free, it was fine.
When Diego Simeone called Álvarez 11 times to convince him to join, even before discussing with Manchester City, it wasn’t considered bad.
When Liverpool were doing the same with Isak last season to put pressure on Newcastle to sell him, nobody complained.
When other clubs speak with a player’s camp and agent to know the possibility of signing the player before approaching his club, it’s not a problem.
But when Barcelona do it, everybody starts crying and says it’s a bad way of trying to sign Álvarez.
You guys are hypocrites. Barcelona submitted a bid for Álvarez. If Álvarez is ready to leave Atlético, he’ll make his intentions known publicly. If we don’t sign Álvarez, we’ll simply look for another striker. It’s that simple.
I deadass want Fabrizio to end them with the nastiest "here we go" ever. It shouldn't be a normal here we go, he needs to quote one of their tweets with the caption "this one isn't AI. Julian Alvarez to FC Barcelona Here We Go 🔵🔴". It will be the coldest here we go in history.