The Dominican Republic has banned Haiti's national football team from playing at its sports venues after crowd trouble at a CONCACAF Nations League match between the two neighbours. Sports Minister Kelvin Cruz announced the ban on Friday, a day after incidents at the entrances to the Felix Sanchez Olympic Stadium in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital.
Video posted on social media showed groups of fans forcing their way through some entrances, and one gate was damaged. Cruz called the damage to a facility that had cost "millions and millions of pesos" unacceptable, citing a zero-tolerance policy on indiscipline. President Luis Abinader backed the move, saying the minister's position was the position of the government.
On the pitch, Haiti won 4-1, with Sunderland striker Wilson Isidor scoring twice. The result put Haiti on nine points in Group A, while the Dominican Republic stayed on six. Haiti next play Costa Rica in San Jose on Sunday. Isidor was filmed saying "Hispaniola is Haiti", a reference to the Caribbean island the two countries share. Dominican Football Federation president Jose Deschamps called the remark "a lack of respect for national sovereignty" and said the federation would file a complaint with FIFA and CONCACAF, football's world and regional governing bodies. The two bodies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Haiti's embassy in Santo Domingo sought to calm tensions. It said the remarks were made "in the heat of competition and the intensity characteristic of sporting events" and did not reflect the Haitian government's position. It thanked Dominican authorities for hosting the match and said sporting rivalries must not undermine relations of good neighbourliness and mutual respect. The Haitian Football Federation, in a post on X after the game, had called it a "beautiful night for Haiti, beautiful night for the island we share", adding: "On the field, competition; off the field, respect for the neighbor." It did not immediately comment on the ban.
The episode comes against a backdrop of long-running tension over migration and border security between the two countries. Abinader's government has stepped up deportations of undocumented Haitians since October 2024, when it pledged to deport up to 10,000 people a week. Sport has been drawn into the dispute before: in 2023, after Abinader closed the border in a row over a Haitian canal on the shared Massacre River, Haiti's sports ministry ordered its football federation to stop staging national team matches in the Dominican Republic.
The ban shows how quickly a sporting event can take on political weight between the two states. It is not yet clear how long the ban will last or how it will affect future fixtures.