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The numbers carry a cruel comic timing. The tournament lasts roughly six weeks; the wait for a visa interview, in places, still runs past a year. According to the US State Department’s own Global Visa Wait Times data, refreshed in its mid-April update, a tourist-visa applicant in Abu Dhabi faced a 14.5-month wait for the next available appointment, one in Dubai about 12.5, and one in Bogotá nine months, with the average wait there clocked at a full year. Lima sat at nine months too; Mumbai and New Delhi hovered around seven. Curiously, Brazil and Turkey, once bywords for the backlog, had by then dropped to barely a month, while Bogota, Dubai, India stayed over five months. The wait, it turns out, is a choice of geography. Either way the maths is unforgiving: a fan who began the process when their side qualified may reach the window about the time the trophy heads home.