Ex-FIFA president Sepp Blatter backs call to 'stay away' from World Cup - ESPN

Former FIFA president Sepp Blatter on Monday backed calls for fans to «stay away» from FIFA World Cup matches in the United States because of the conduct of President Donald Trump and his administration at home and abroad.

Blatter was the latest international soccer figure to call into question the suitability of the United States as a host country in a post on X that supported Mark Pieth's comments from an interview last week with the Swiss newspaper Der Bund.

Pieth, a Swiss attorney specializing in white-collar crime and an anti-corruption expert, chaired the Independent Governance Committee's oversight of FIFA reform a decade ago. Blatter was president of the world's governing body for soccer from 1998-2015. He resigned amid an investigation into corruption.

In his interview with Der Bund, Pieth said, «If we consider everything we've discussed, there's only one piece of advice for fans: Stay away from the USA! You'll see it better on TV anyway. And upon arrival, fans should expect that if they don't please the officials, they'll be put straight on the next flight home. If they're lucky.»

In his X post, Blatter quoted Pietha and added: «I think Mark Pieth is right to question this World Cup.»

The United States is co-hosting the World Cup with Canada and Mexico from June 11-July 19.

The international soccer community's concerns about the United States stem from Trump's expansionist posture on Greenland, travel bans and aggressive tactics in dealing with migrants and immigration enforcement protestors in American cities, particularly Minneapolis.

Oke Göttlich, one of the vice presidents of the German soccer federation, told the Hamburger Morgenpost newspaper in an interview on Friday that the time had come to seriously