4 hours ago
13
The Football Association has remained coy over what will happen when England line up for their next World Cup match against Ghana on Tuesday and come up against a familiar opponent in Thomas Partey. The former Arsenal midfielder played for Villarreal this season, but will be released at the end of his contract this month.
In the pre-match ceremony, all players are expected to shake hands with opponents, and the FA will leave England’s players to decide whether they wish to go through the ritual with Partey. The squad includes two of his former club-mates, Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka.
For some, a handshake will seem uncomfortable. Partey is scheduled to go on trial next year at Southwark crown court after he was charged with five counts of rape and one of sexual assault last year. He was later charged with two further counts of rape. Partey has denied all the charges, with his lawyer insisting that he welcomes the chance to clear his name.
He missed Ghana’s opening World Cup game against Panama on Thursday, but that was not because of any qualms on behalf of the Ghanaian FA in selecting him. The team coach, Carlos Queiroz, a former assistant of Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, has maintained his player should be regarded as innocent unless proven guilty. “Let events run their normal course, let the river flow and one day, when the river meets the ocean, we will find the truth,” he has said.
Partey’s absence from Ghana’s first game was because it was being played in Toronto and Canadian officials refused him entry. He is available to play against England in Boston because the USA has granted him a visa.
The Ghanaian is not the only player accused of rape participating at the World Cup. The Japan midfielder Kaishu Sano was arrested for gang-rape in 2024, when it was alleged that he and two friends sexually assaulted a female companion after she had joined them for a celebratory meal in Tokyo when the player’s transfer from Kashima Antlers to Mainz was confirmed. The woman called the police immediately after the alleged attack and the three men were arrested on a nearby street.
Prosecutors dropped the charges after Sano reportedly apologised to the complainant and made a large payment to her. Sano later issued a statement saying: “I am truly sorry for causing trouble to so many people with my actions,” before returning to the national team.
As Morocco’s Achraf Hakimi prepared to take on Scotland on Friday, a French court confirmed he would face trial for the alleged rape of a woman in 2023, which he denies. The woman, then aged 24, told police she met Hakimi, now a two-time Champions League winner with Paris Saint-Germain, in January 2023 on Instagram and went to his home in a taxi ordered by the player and he raped her.
Shortly after the Versailles court of appeal delivered its ruling, Hakimi wrote on X that he had been “waiting for this trial since day one. At last, I’ll be able to speak.” A date has not been announced for trial.
In Partey’s case, many in Ghana initially blamed the co-hosts, with the African country’s ministry of foreign affairs condemning “the high-handed and extremely unfair decision by Canada to refuse a temporary residence application. Ghana considers that reliance on unproven charges in the absence of a judicial determination raises fundamental questions of fairness and proportionality.”
Diplomatic channels were used, but when the Ghana FA challenged the visa denial in court, it turned out that Partey had misled officials in his visa application. The court ruling said: “In the statutory criminality and security questions of the application, the applicant [Partey] answered ‘No’ to having ever committed, been arrested for, charged with or convicted of any criminal offence in any country.”
That seemed unwise in the extreme, given he is engaged in a hugely high-profile rape case for crimes allegedly committed when he was playing for Arsenal. It meant his appeal was always likely to fail, which it did. It also sparked a political storm in Ghana, again not over his suitability to represent the nation, but over how the Ghanaian FA had allowed such a basic mistake to be made.
“All this while, we were being fed lies and inaccurate information, creating a false impression about why Partey was denied entry into Canada,” said Fiifi Boafo, a politician with the opposition New Patriotic party in Ghana, on Facebook. “Heads must roll.”
Others said it was shameful for Ghana to be portrayed in such a light. “What we are witnessing now is an ‘amateur hour’ at the GFA,” said Dr Joshua Jebuntie Zaato, senior fellow at the University of Ghana, on TV3 Ghana. “Someone must be held responsible for this error.”
The Ghanaian FA said its role in the visa application had been “mischaracterised”. It said it “had a duty to support and facilitate visa applications for all accredited members of the Ghana delegation” and had “worked closely with the player, his legal representatives, Fifa, and the relevant Canadian authorities.
“The court did not make any finding of fault, negligence, misconduct or incompetence against the Ghana Football Association. The GFA remains satisfied that it acted diligently, professionally, and in good faith at all times in support of the player and the national team.”
It meant that while his teammates travelled to Boston, Partey was left at the team’s training base at Bryant University in Rhode Island. That Ghana recorded a dramatic 1-0 win over Panama, courtesy of a 95th-minute Caleb Yirenkyi goal, has somewhat rescued Ghanaian officials from criticism.
Pre-match handshakes have led to some awkward footballer confrontations, though usually related to personal issues between players such as John Terry and Wayne Bridge and Patrice Evra and Luis Suárez.
The FA has not expressed an official position and legal experts agree it would be unwise for it to do so given Partey’s lawyer is sure to claim such a stance would be prejudicial to his trial. It would not, according to experts, mean a trial being thrown out, but it would be an unnecessary position for the FA to take.
England players are not expected to snub Partey; most regard the pre-match handshake as a mere formality devoid of significant meaning.
Additional reporting by Gavin Blair
