AINEWS
Fifa to pay Somali referee full World Cup fee after US visa rejection
Omar Artan was barred from entering the United States after an 11 hour interrogation and was put on a plane back to Turkey without ever reaching a World Cup match.
Omar Artan was barred from entering the United States after an 11 hour interrogation and was put on a plane back to Turkey without ever reaching a World Cup match.
Fifa will pay Somali referee Omar Artan his full 2026 World Cup fee, even though US border officials turned him back at the gate and he never reached a match. The decision, reported by BBC Sport on Sunday, frames the payment as a contractual stand rather than a sympathetic gesture: Fifa's obligation to the official it selected — and then could not protect — survives the refusal of entry.
Artan, a Fifa-listed referee since 2018 and the 2025 Confederation of African Football (Caf) men's referee of the year, was detained for 11 hours at Miami International Airport on Monday before being told his diplomatic passport and single-entry US visa had been rejected. He was put back on a plane to Turkey, where Fifa's staff helped him onto a connection to Mogadishu.
A US government official, speaking anonymously to the BBC, said the denial rested on an alleged "association with suspected members of terror organisations." When pressed, officers questioned Artan about the Somali militant group Al Shabab — a designated terrorist organisation under US and other sanctions regimes. Artan told the officers he knew nothing about the group and described himself as "just simply a referee who's trying to live his dream."
That asymmetry is the centre of the story. One side is a named international official with a decade of service and a continental award. The other is an unnamed government source citing unnamed evidence against a man who has never been charged with any offence. A US entry decision of this kind is reviewable, but the public record so far is one anonymous allegation, one on-record denial, and a referee on a plane home.
Fifa's full-fee payment makes a quiet institutional argument. Sources told BBC Sport that match officials are deployed, not hired at the gate. The federation selects them, books them, and carries the diplomatic and logistical cost of getting them to the venue. If a referee cannot enter the host country for reasons outside his control, the contract does not quietly dissolve. Fifa's commitment signals that it considers the obligation to stand.
The fee itself is opaque. Referees do not know the actual fee they will receive for officiating at the World Cup; payment is made after the tournament is over. "Full" is therefore a placeholder for the standard scale rather than a published figure. The point of the commitment is the principle, not the number.
Artan has work ahead. He was the first Somali to referee a continental final, taking charge of the Pyramids FC versus Mamelodi Sundowns match in June 2025. He is in line for the Uefa Super Cup between Paris St-Germain and Aston Villa in Salzburg on 12 August, and has spoken of staying the course to the 2030 World Cup. Those assignments are forward facts, not resolution.
The unanswered parts of the story sit with Washington. Which suspected members of which organisations, by which evidence, under which process, and with what right of reply? Until a named US official answers those questions, the visa refusal will continue to do its work in the dark, and Fifa's commitment will continue to do its work in the light.