Ex-World Soccer Boss Joins Chorus Telling Fans to Shun World Cup

(Bloomberg) -- Pleas to consider boycotting the World Cup in the US this summer are rising amid President Donald Trump’s fraying relationship with Europe.

Sepp Blatter, the controversial former president of FIFA, advised football fans in a social media post on Monday to “stay away” from America and the 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. 

A spokesperson for FIFA declined to comment.

The US is co-hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico for about five weeks starting in June. The tournament has already been criticized for exorbitant ticket prices. Now Trump’s policies, including a desire to take control of Greenland from fellow NATO member Denmark, are increasing debate about boycotting the event in response.

“What were the justifications for the boycotts of the Olympic Games in the 1980s?” Göttlich told the German newspaper, referring to several countries skipping the Olympics in Moscow after the former USSR invaded Afghanistan.

“By my reckoning, the potential threat is greater now than it was then,” Göttlich said. “We need to have this discussion.”

Opposition has also come from British politicians and Mark Pieth, who led a committee to oversee reforms at FIFA last decade. He’s said that fans should boycott the World Cup because of America’s increasing authoritarianism.

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