A World Cup video review official is facing calls for immediate removal after appearing to flash a hand gesture associated with white supremacist movements during a live TV broadcast ahead of Germany's opening group game against Curaçao on Sunday.
Shaun Evans, an Australian official working his first World Cup, was caught on the official match broadcast making what appeared to be an upside-down "OK" symbol with his right hand held below his waist — a gesture designated a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League in 2019. The broadcast cut to the VAR analysts' room in Dallas, where Evans made the gesture while the rest of the team stood by unaware.
Fare wants him gone — now
The Fare network, which has monitored discriminatory symbols and chants at international football for years in partnership with both FIFA and UEFA, didn't hedge its language. "Clearly this official should have no further role to play in this World Cup," it said, describing the gesture as "neo-nazi."
"Advice from our experts is that the gesture used clearly resembles an upside down 'OK' hand symbol used as a 'white power' symbol in global far-right circles," Fare added. That's about as direct as a partner organisation ever gets with FIFA.
There is, of course, the other explanation. The same gesture is the basis of the "circle game" — a playground prank where you flash the sign below your waist and punch whoever looks at it. Evans may have been trolling a colleague. He may have had no political intent whatsoever.
But intent and optics are two different things at a tournament that's supposed to be under heightened scrutiny for exactly this kind of incident. FIFA has yet to respond publicly. Football Australia and the Professional Football Referees Association were also contacted and had not commented at the time of publication.
The gesture was made on the world's biggest football stage, caught on the official broadcast, and is now being called "neo-nazi" by FIFA's own discrimination monitoring partner. Whether Evans meant it or not, that's the situation FIFA is now managing.
