Remember when “they” said to keep politics out of sports? Yeah, well that seems to only apply to people of a certain shade. Just ask the players from Jamaica’s Mount Pleasant FA.
This week, 10 players from the soccer club, winners of the 2025 Concacaf Caribbean Cup, were denied visas to enter the United States for their game against the LA Galaxy in California.
You see, several of the players on the team are from Haiti, one of the countries that Tr**p added to the travel ban list on January 1st. The ban bars Haitian nationals from entering the US.
Because of this, Mount Pleasant FA was forced to call up academy players to fill out the roster, which means that the team’s best players won’t be on the pitch for the game against the Galaxy.
“We don’t want to just show up for the game, we want to be able to compete, but we are not being given the opportunity to be at our best,” said Mount Pleasant sporting director Paul Christie to the Jamaica Observer. “[This is] not just about Brand Mount Pleasant, but this is also about Brand Jamaica.”
According to Christie, many of the affected players were not even able to secure interviews at the US embassy, forcing the team to turn to younger, less experienced players who played in the the Under-20 qualifying first round tournament that ended earlier this week.
This is yet another example of how this administration’s “America First” policies continue to ruin things, in this case sports, an industry many perceive to be devoid of politics.
A fact which those with common sense know is completely false.
Under Tr**p, the upcoming FIFA World Cup is shaping up to be a worrisome experience for certain fans, particularly those from nations on the travel ban list.
While US officials have said players, coaches, staff and relatives from countries on that list will be given exemptions to play in the US, they didn’t extend that promise to fans of those countries, leaving doubt, frustration and anger from soccer fans across the globe.
So now the 78 matches held across 11 US cities might lack the global fan support for teams from banned countries, including Haiti, which qualified for the World Cup for only the second time in the country’s history.
