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- News and buildup as World Cup countdown continues
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Morning/evening/middle-of-the-night everyone. And welcome to Wednesday?s World Cup liveblog, with around 35 hours to go to the big kick-off. Excited? I kind of am, in spite of myself. Because yesterday was a pretty unedifying day, as some of the fears around the cruel politicisation of the tournament came to fruition, with the fallout from the barring of the Somali referee Omar Artan, members of Iran?s entourage being denied admission to the US and their ticket allocation being seemingly withdrawn, plus the earlier long detention on arrival of the Iraq striker Aymen Hussein. Fifa, normally so insistent on imposing full colonial demands on host countries, has acquiesced with all this.
But never mind, because Fifa overlord Gianni Infantino has been joshing about the US being invaded by friendly ?barbarians?. Speaking at the tournament?s star-studded launch shindig in LA, the Fifa president quipped: ?You will be invaded. You will be invaded by a horde of barbarians. But it?s happy barbarians, don?t worry.
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