With just two weeks to go before the World Cup kicks off, Haiti is preparing for only its second-ever appearance in football’s biggest tournament. Most of the squad is already in Florida, training and preparing for warm-up matches. But one player remains in limbo, still waiting on a US visa that has not arrived, his participation in the tournament hanging on the pace of a bureaucratic process that has so far offered no guarantees.
Woodensky Pierre is a defensive midfielder and the only member of Haiti’s 26-man squad who plays his club football in Haiti, turning out for Violette AC in the capital Port-au-Prince. The other 25 players on the squad are all based outside the country, in leagues in England, France, Portugal, Canada, and the United States. Pierre is the exception, the one player still rooted in a country that, by almost any measure, is in crisis.
The Haitian Football Federation spokesperson Thecieux Jeanty confirmed that the process of securing Pierre’s visa is ongoing, with the support of the Haitian government. He was careful but pointed in how he framed the situation. “We mustn’t forget that a visa is a courtesy, but here we’re talking about an athlete who will be representing his country in an international competition,” he said. The implication was clear: the ordinary rules of visa discretion feel inadequate when applied to a man preparing to compete on behalf of his nation at the World Cup.
Pierre is not alone in facing this obstacle. Nearly a dozen Haitian football officials are also still waiting for visas, caught in the widening net of travel restrictions being expanded by the Trump administration, which has included Haiti among the countries affected. The collision between US immigration policy and the logistics of a World Cup hosted on American soil is creating a situation that is, at minimum, deeply awkward, and at worst, risks denying a player the opportunity of a lifetime on procedural grounds.
The context around Pierre makes his potential participation all the more charged. Port-au-Prince, the city where he lives and plays, is around 70 per cent under the control of violent gangs. Haiti is enduring a severe socio-political crisis that has gutted its institutions, driven hundreds of thousands from their homes, and left ordinary life a daily exercise in survival. Against that backdrop, a footballer still playing his trade in the capital carries a weight that goes beyond his position on the pitch.
Jeanty put it plainly. “Woodensky’s presence is highly symbolic because Haiti is a dying country. We know the country is going through a major socio-political crisis with serious security problems,” he said. Pierre’s inclusion in the squad is being read in Haiti as proof that football still exists there, that life still continues, that the country is not yet entirely consumed by the chaos around it. For many Haitians, his jersey number at a World Cup would represent something much larger than sport.
Jeanty also allowed himself a moment of candour about what this tournament could mean for Pierre personally. “I hope he doesn’t have to live in Haiti after the World Cup,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to present himself to the world and await a contract.” It is a quietly devastating sentence, an acknowledgement that for a young footballer living in Port-au-Prince today, the World Cup is not just a sporting ambition. It may be a way out.
Haiti will play warm-up matches against New Zealand and Peru before their first official game of the tournament, a clash against Scotland on 13 June in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Whether Pierre is on the pitch for any of those matches depends on a decision that is still, frustratingly, out of his hands. For a player who has built his career in one of the world’s most dangerous cities, the final barrier standing between him and the World Cup is a piece of paper.
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