When Even Avoiding Football Becomes Difficult

Getting away from football in the UK is difficult at the best of times. There’s usually a match, a tournament, a transfer rumour, a managerial crisis, or someone explaining why this year is definitely the year.

I’m not a football fan. Ordinarily, I go out of my way to avoid it. But the 2026 World Cup has become difficult to ignore, and they’ve not even kicked a ball yet.

The reason isn’t the football itself. It’s the news coming out of the United States concerning the treatment of athletes, officials, fans, migrants and communities around the tournament.

Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan has been denied entry to the United States and will miss the World Cup, despite reportedly holding a valid visa. FIFA has confirmed that he won’t be able to take part, and US Customs and Border Protection has referred to “vetting concerns.” This sits alongside wider concerns raised by human rights organisations about visa restrictions, immigration enforcement, policing, protest rights, media freedom, and the safety of fans, journalists, workers and local communities.[1]

It’s possible to say, quite reasonably, that national borders exist and that host countries will always have some form of entry process. But that doesn’t settle the issue. The question is what kind of welcome is being offered when a global sporting event invites the nations of the world to gather, while some of those nations’ people are treated first as risks, problems or threats.

It is difficult not to draw some comparisons to the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

The comparison needs care. I’m not saying that the United States today is simply the same as Nazi Germany. But it may still help us ask a more specific question: what happens when international sport becomes bound up with national image, public hospitality, and the exclusion of people who don’t fit the story a state wants to tell about itself?

But the distinction can be drawn too neatly. The United States isn’t only making administrative decisions about entry to a sporting event. The World Cup is taking place within a wider context in which LGBT+ people, disabled people, migrants and racialised communities are already being targeted, restricted, profiled or made more vulnerable. Human Rights Watch’s 2026 World Report says the US has taken “significant steps backward” on immigration, disability, gender, criminal justice, health, labour, environmental and free speech rights. It also describes inhumane conditions and degrading treatment for immigrants and asylum seekers, alongside wider concerns about discrimination and rights protections.[2]

The concern isn’t simply that some supporters may have difficulty getting into the country. It is that the tournament is being hosted by a state whose public life is already marked by disputes over whose bodies are recognised, whose identities are protected, whose histories are told, whose needs are accommodated, and whose presence is treated as a threat.

The 1936 Berlin Olympics provide a historically distinct but still relevant point of comparison. The Games were used by Nazi Germany as propaganda. The regime wanted to present itself as orderly, modern, strong and respectable. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes that most tourists wouldn’t have known that anti-Jewish signs had been temporarily removed, or that Roma and Sinti people in Berlin had been rounded up by police before the Games. German authorities forced around 600 Roma and Sinti people into a camp at Marzahn, on the edge of the city.[3]

The issue wasn’t only that Nazi Germany hosted a sporting event while persecuting people elsewhere. The sporting event itself became part of the deception. Foreign visitors could be welcomed, not because the regime had become hospitable, but because their presence helped the regime tell a lie about itself.

That makes any claim that Nazi Germany treated foreign athletes and visitors “better” very difficult. In one narrow sense, it may have made more effort to present a façade of welcome. But that isn’t much of a defence. It shows how carefully the welcome was being managed, and what it was being used to hide.

The present situation in the United States is different from 1936, but the difference may not be as reassuring as we might first want it to be. Berlin 1936 raises the problem of hospitality as disguise. The regime welcomed selected foreign athletes and visitors while hiding, displacing or minimising the persecution of those it had already marked as outside the national community.

The US World Cup raises a related problem. It isn’t hiding exclusion in the same way. In many cases, exclusionary measures are openly defended as policy, security, border control, protection, or the restoration of order. Yet public justification doesn’t remove the ethical concern. If anything, it risks making exclusion appear ordinary and acceptable.

So the difference isn’t simply hidden exclusion versus visible exclusion. A more careful question is whether global sport should allow a nation to host major events such as the World Cup while its politics are already shaping public attitudes towards those who are perceived as different, including migrants, disabled people, racialised communities, and LGBT+ people.

This isn’t the first time that question has come up. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar was repeatedly criticised over migrant worker abuses, LGBT+ rights, women’s rights and limits on free expression. Human Rights Watch argued that FIFA had awarded Qatar the tournament without sufficient human rights protections for migrant workers, women, LGBT+ people and journalists. Amnesty International also criticised FIFA after the tournament for failing to commit to proper compensation for migrant workers and their families. Similar questions also arise around other international cultural events. Eurovision, for example, has repeatedly had to face questions about whether a supposedly unifying cultural event can separate itself from the politics and actions of participating states.[4][5]

The issue, then, isn’t unique to the United States. The US case is the one currently in front of us, but it sits within a wider pattern. Sporting and cultural institutions often want the symbolism of international unity without taking full responsibility for the conditions under which that unity is staged.

Hospitality isn’t only about how a state treats honoured guests. It is also about what happens to those who are inconvenient to the story the state wants to tell about itself.

Hospitality, in Scripture, isn’t simply a matter of politeness. It isn’t the art of being friendly to approved guests while others are excluded, frightened or made invisible. Hospitality is one of the ways a community reveals what it believes about God and about human beings.

In the Hebrew Scriptures, Israel is repeatedly told to remember that they were strangers in Egypt. That memory is meant to shape their treatment of the foreigner and the vulnerable. “You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19). Leviticus makes the point even more sharply: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34).

That isn’t sentimental language. It’s a command rooted in memory. A people who’ve known oppression are not to reproduce the logic of oppression when they have power.

The prophets press the same question from another angle. They’re deeply suspicious of public religion that looks impressive while injustice continues. Isaiah 58 challenges religious performance that coexists with exploitation and oppression. The fast God chooses is “to loose the bonds of injustice,” to share bread with the hungry, and to bring the homeless poor into the house (Isaiah 58:6-7). The issue isn’t whether the public ritual is moving or well organised. The issue is whether it corresponds to justice.

That seems relevant to a global sporting event full of flags, anthems, opening ceremonies, official slogans and claims about unity. Those things can be genuinely moving. But faith asks whether the ritual corresponds to reality. A celebration of the nations isn’t authentic if some of those nations’ people are treated as threats before they can even arrive.

In Matthew 25, the stranger isn’t a marginal concern. The stranger becomes one of the places where Christ is encountered: “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35). The question isn’t only whether we admire Christ in worship, but whether we recognise him in the person who is dependent on our welcome.

That doesn’t give us a simple immigration policy. It doesn’t mean there are no questions of safety, process or discernment. But it does mean that suspicion can’t be the default Christian posture. The person at the border is not first a visa category, a security concern, a migrant, a problem or an administrative inconvenience. They’re first a human being made in the image of God.

There’s also something here about authenticity. A welcome that’s staged for cameras while exclusion is hidden isn’t authentic. A welcome that’s offered only to those who’ve already been filtered into acceptability is not quite welcome either. It may be efficient. It may be legal. It may even be popular. But for those of us shaped by faith traditions that place value on hospitality, justice and the dignity of the stranger, it should still trouble us.

Perhaps this is why the World Cup has become difficult to ignore, even for someone who’d normally be trying quite hard to ignore it. It brings together questions about hospitality, national image, public truthfulness and the treatment of those who are already vulnerable.

A global celebration can’t be separated from the conditions under which people are allowed to take part. Welcome means more than permission for those who pass through the right filters. It also involves asking what happens to those who are excluded, frightened or made invisible.

I’d still rather avoid the football, if I’m honest. I’m not planning to develop strong opinions on formations, penalty decisions, or whether anyone was robbed by VAR. But when the world is invited to gather, and some people are treated as if their presence is a problem before they’ve even arrived, it becomes harder to look away.

They’ve not kicked a ball yet. Perhaps that gives us time to ask what kind of welcome is already being offered.

[1] Reuters, “Somali soccer referee who was denied US entry says what happened was ‘fate’,” 10 June 2026, https://www.reuters.com/sports/soccer/somali-soccer-referee-who-was-denied-us-entry-says-what-happened-was-wrong-2026-06-10/; Reuters, “Rights group warn of ‘climate of fear’ at US World Cup games,” 3 June 2026, https://www.reuters.com/world/rights-group-warn-climate-fear-us-world-cup-games-2026-06-03/; Human Rights Watch, “2026 World Cup: Tournament Will Kick Off in Climate of Fear,” 27 April 2026, https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/04/27/2026-world-cup-tournament-will-kick-off-in-climate-of-fear

[2] Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2026: United States,” 2026, https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2026/country-chapters/united-states

[3] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “1936 Olympics: Berlin Games and the Nazi Regime,” updated 7 April 2025, https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-nazi-olympics-berlin-1936; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “The Nazi Olympics: Berlin 1936: The Facade of Hospitality,” https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/olympics/?content=facade_hospitality_more&lang=en; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Marzahn Camp for Roma and Sinti Established,” https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/timeline-event/holocaust/1933-1938/marzahn-camp-for-roma-and-sinti-established; Imperial War Museums, “The 1936 Berlin Olympics,” https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/second-world-war/holocaust/1936-olympics

[4] Human Rights Watch, “Qatar: Rights Abuses Stain FIFA World Cup,” 14 November 2022, https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/11/14/qatar-rights-abuses-stain-fifa-world-cup; Amnesty International, “FIFA misleading world on remedy for migrant workers,” 12 December 2022, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/12/fifa-misleading-world-on-remedy-for-migrant-workers/

[5] Reuters, “Switzerland wins Eurovision Song Contest amid Gaza protests,” 12 May 2024, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/sweden-gears-up-eurovision-final-amid-israel-protests-dutch-controversy-2024-05-11/