In the run-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Western media did not merely criticise. They went to war. Every migrant worker death, every labour-rights abuse, every restriction on free expression and LGBTQ+ rights was dissected in minute detail. Broadcasters, newspapers and human-rights organisations framed the entire tournament as morally compromised, a stain on the soul of the beautiful game. “Blood on the pitch,” they declared. Boycotts were urged. Sponsors were shamed. The message was unequivocal: no amount of glittering architecture could wash away Qatar’s human-rights record.

Four years later, the 2026 World Cup is kicking off across the United States, Mexico and Canada. And the silence from those same quarters is deafening.

What is unfolding inside the United States is not a series of minor bureaucratic hiccups. It is a direct assault on everything the World Cup is supposed to represent: the idea that football belongs to the world, that the pitch is the one place where passports and politics are left at the gate.
Consider what has happened in the opening days of the tournament.

Omar Abdulkadir Artan, award-winning Somali referee, Africa’s top official in 2025 and the first Somali ever selected for a men’s World Cup, was denied entry at Miami International Airport despite holding a valid visa. FIFA immediately dropped him from the referee list. A man chosen to uphold the laws of the game was turned away by the immigration laws of one host nation.

The entire Senegal national team delegation was subjected to a humiliating tarmac search upon arrival in San Antonio. Players were ordered to open luggage in full view of cameras and onlookers, shoes removed, belongings turned inside out, sniffer dogs circling, all while standing on a runway.

Uzbekistan’s squad received similar treatment. Videos went viral and ignited outrage across Africa and Central Asia. These were not suspects. They were athletes, invited guests of a World Cup host nation.
African supporters from countries caught in the Trump administration’s travel restrictions continue to face visa delays and unexplained denials, even after the punishing $15,000 visa-bond requirement was partially waived. Ghanaian supporters, Senegalese families, fans who saved for years to witness their teams on the world stage are being told: you may watch from afar. Your money is welcome. Your presence is not.

None of this is happening in Mexico or Canada. It is happening in the United States of America.
And the crowning irony? FIFA President Gianni Infantino personally awarded Donald Trump the inaugural “FIFA Peace Prize – Football Unites the World” in December 2025 during the tournament draw in Washington. Infantino praised him for “making peace and making the world prosper” and handed over a gleaming trophy as cameras rolled. Now we see what that peace looks like: a Somali referee turned away at the border, African players treated as security threats on the tarmac, fans excluded because of their nationality. Football Unites the World? Only if your passport is the right colour.

The double standard is grotesque. When Qatar built its stadiums using migrant labour under conditions that cost workers their lives, the Western press screamed. Rightly so. When the United States deploys its immigration apparatus to filter who may participate in a tournament on its soil, those same voices go quiet. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have warned about the climate of fear enveloping this World Cup. The mainstream Western narrative has largely moved on to the fixtures.
This is not about deflecting from Qatar’s abuses. Qatar’s record deserved every line of scrutiny it received. The point is simpler and more damning: if human rights are genuine principles, they cannot be applied selectively. They cannot be reserved for states the West finds convenient to condemn and quietly suspended when the host is a Western ally.

FIFA’s bidding process for 2026 included explicit human-rights commitments. The organisation’s rhetoric holds that football is for everyone. Yet its president’s warm embrace of the very administration enforcing these exclusions suggests that rhetoric is, at best, hollow.
For Sierra Leone and the wider African continent, this is not abstract. Our players, our officials and our fans are among those bearing the brunt. We have watched with pride as African football has grown in stature and global respect. We watch now with anger as that respect is casually undermined at an American airport.

The World Cup is the planet’s shared festival, perhaps the only event that genuinely crosses every boundary of language, culture, religion and race. When referees, players and fans are humiliated or excluded because of where they were born, the tournament is diminished. Every match played under that shadow carries the weight of who was not permitted to be there.

As the 2026 finals unfold, the question must be asked without apology: if human rights and dignity mattered so much in Doha, why do they matter so little in Miami, Atlanta and Los Angeles?
Football unites the world, or at least it should. Right now, in the United States, it is being used to divide it. And the world is watching.