Sepp Blatter, the former FIFA President charged and later twice acquitted of corruption, has backed a proposed fan boycott of matches in the US when the Soccer World Cup gets under way later this year.
The US is hosting the cup with Mexico and Canada in June and July, but recent conduct by President Donald Trump has led to some urging fans to stay away from the states when it begins.
The international soccer community’s concerns about the United States stem from Trump’s expansionist posture on Greenland, travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and protesters in American cities, particularly Minneapolis.
Blatter was the latest international soccer figure to call into question the suitability of the United States as a host country.
He called for the boycott in a post on X that supported Mark Pieth’s comments in an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund.
Pieth, a Swiss attorney specialising in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, 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 with Der Bund, Pieth said, “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.”
In his X post, Blatter quoted Pieth and added, “I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup.”
Elsewhere, Oke Göttlich, president of the Bundesliga club St. Pauli and a vice president of the German Football Association, said that the time had come to “seriously consider and discuss” a boycott, according to an interview in the Hamburger Morgen Post.
The tournament has also been criticised for exorbitant ticket prices.
With AP, Bloomberg
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