Thomas Partey will be available for Ghana against England in Boston on Tuesday after the US granted him a visa, even though he missed the team’s opening World Cup game in Toronto when Canadian officials refused him entry. The same tournament has now produced two different answers for the same player on consecutive matchdays.
That split matters because Partey is not being left out by Ghana. He was denied access to Canada for Thursday’s match against Panama, then cleared to travel into the US for the next game. The midfielder has denied all accusations against him, but he remains set to play while facing rape charges and a sexual assault charge, with trial scheduled next year at Southwark crown court.
The sequence has put Ghana’s World Cup selection under a strange kind of border control. Partey played for Villarreal this season and is due to be released when his contract ends this month, but for now his availability depends less on football than on immigration decisions in two countries. Ghana’s ministry of foreign affairs has already condemned Canada’s refusal of a temporary residence application, calling it “the high‑handed and extremely unfair decision by Canada to refuse a temporary residence application” and saying “Ghana considers that reliance on unproven charges in the absence of a judicial determination raises fundamental questions of fairness and proportionality.”
The friction is impossible to miss. England’s players have been left to decide whether to shake hands with Partey in the pre-match ceremony, and The Football Association has said that choice will be theirs. Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka, both former clubmates of Partey at Arsenal, are in the England squad, which gives Tuesday’s match a personal edge that goes beyond the standings. It also means the football can proceed in Boston even as the criminal case against him continues elsewhere.
For Ghana, the immediate question is not whether Partey can be selected, but whether he can be moved from one border to the next before kickoff. Canada has already shut one door. The US has opened the next one.
