KINGSTON, Ja­maica – Ten play­ers from Ja­maican side Mount Pleas­ant have been de­nied visas to en­ter the Unit­ed States for Wednes­day’s Con­ca­caf Cham­pi­ons Cup tie against LA Galaxy.

As a re­sult, Mount Pleas­ant – the win­ners of the 2025 Con­ca­caf Caribbean Cup – have been forced to call up a num­ber of acad­e­my play­ers ahead of their Cham­pi­ons Cup de­but against Galaxy at the Dig­ni­ty Health Sports Park in Cal­i­for­nia.

Mount Pleas­ant’s squad in­cludes sev­en play­ers from the Caribbean is­land na­tion of Haiti.

Unit­ed States Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump ex­pand­ed a trav­el ban that came in­to force on Jan­u­ary 1, which bars Haiti na­tion­als from en­ter­ing the US.

How­ev­er, ex­emp­tions are in place for events such as the World Cup, which is be­ing co-host­ed by the US this sum­mer.

“We don’t want to just show up for the game, we want to be able to com­pete, but we are not be­ing giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be at our best,” Mount Pleas­ant sport­ing di­rec­tor Paul Christie told the Ja­maica Ob­serv­er.

A CON­CA­CAF spokesper­son told BBC Sport the match will go ahead be­cause it was the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Mount Pleas­ant to sub­mit visa ap­pli­ca­tions with­in the time­frame spec­i­fied by the US.

“The club had am­ple time to com­plete the visa ap­pli­ca­tion process fol­low­ing the com­pe­ti­tion’s of­fi­cial draw in De­cem­ber 2025,” CON­CA­CAF said.

CMC