Donald Trump Newly signed travel ban Contains an exemption that could apply to players, staff or families associated with clubs participating in the 2025 club World Cup, the FIFA World Cup 2026 or at the 2028 Olympic Games.
The American president signed a sweeping order prohibiting the trips of 12 countries and restricting the trips of seven others, relaunches and expanding the prohibitions to travel from his first mandate.
The nationals of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will be “entirely” linked to entry into the United States, according to proclamation. Meanwhile, the entry of nationals of Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela will be partly limited.
However, there is an exemption described in section 4 of the Order, which stipulates that “any athlete or member of a sports team, including coaches, people playing a necessary support role and immediate parents, traveling for the World Cup, the Olympic Games or any other major sporting event, as determined by the Secretary of State” are not subject to the prohibition.
A FIFA spokesperson refused to comment when he was asked if the director had put pressure on the placement of the exception. FIFA president Gianni Infantino has done everything possible Appear publicly with Trump In recent months, sitting next to the president at the first public meeting of his working group of the World Cup and arriving late at the FIFA Congress to meet Trump during his visit to the Middle East.
It is not clear either if the “World Cup” mentioned in the exemption applies both to the 2026 World Cup involving international teams and 2025 Club World CupWho will feature many teams of world clubs in places through the United States this year.
It is also not clear if the ban will oblige American actors who play international for countries subject to the ban on returning from the current presence Fifa International window early. Venezuela, for example, has three players in its team playing in the Major League Soccer. They should play two World Cup qualifiers: one against Bolivia on Friday evening and another against Uruguay on Tuesday. Trump’s travel ban is expected to take action on Monday, June 9.
The teams that qualified for the Club World Cup employ 10 players from countries appointed in the travel ban. They are: Inter Miami’s Telasco Segovia (Venezuela), Botafogo’s Jefferson Savarino (Venezuela), Hope of Tunis’s Roger Aholou (Togo), Lafc’s David Martínez (Venezuela), Internazionale’s Mehdi Taremi (Iran), Ulsan’s Matías Lacava (Venezuela), Al-Ain Kodjo Fo-Doh Laba (Togo), Josna Loulendo (Republic of Congo) and Mohamed Awadalla (Sudan), as well as Salomón Rondón de Pachuca (Venezuela).
Only one country on the displacement list, Iran, has already qualified for the 2026 World Cup. Venezuela is seventh in South American qualification, five points behind Colombia for an automatic world cup place, but always in the photo to qualify via an interconfect-up eliminatory series. Equatorial Guinea and Libya are mathematically still alive in African qualifications, but unlikely to go to the next round. Sudan is third in its World Cup qualifying group, at a point of automatic qualification. Haiti looks good to reach the next qualification cycle of the Concacaf World Cup.
