FIFA sparks outrage with Peace Prize award to Donald Trump

With the legendary Lionel Messi scheduled to visit India and play in Hyderabad soon, and the release of the fixtures for the 2026 World Cup, football fever is building up in India and the rest of the world. But the game’s followers recently witnessed a controversial phenomenon that had never occurred earlier in the history of the sport.

For the first time, the international governing body for football, FIFA, announced a global Peace Prize and it was awarded to US President Donald Trump. Now, many football fans and experts are raising questions. First of all, who is the FIFA to award a Peace Prize ? What is the relevance and validity of such an award ? It seems ridiculous. It is as absurd as it would be if the Nobel Peace Prize committee ever decided to award a prize for football.

Ronald Reagan had to obey

It may be recalled that when the Olympic Games were conducted in Los Angeles in 1984, the then President of the USA, Ronald Reagan, was instructed by the International Olympic Committee to keep his opening day speech to four minutes maximum. Reagan had to obey.

Now the tables seem to have turned. FIFA, one of the world’s most powerful sports bodies with more than 200 member countries (even more than the UNO), has decided to lower itself and bow down to the present US President to get into his good books.

The act in itself was extremely odd and unwarranted. Moreover, according to reports, the creation of the prize, and its award to the US President, was never discussed at the FIFA Council or the AGM or with FIFA Vice Presidents. It seems that the FIFA boss Gianni Infantino created this award by himself and decided to give it to Trump.

Sets a wrong precedent

The deed has created a wrong precedent. Now other sports bodies may get the same idea and begin giving awards to different political leaders in order to curry favours. If the trend catches on, we may see the BCCI create a World Peace Prize and hand it over to a great political leader of India.

The fact remains that it is definitely not the job of sports bodies to create world peace awards. FIFA’s questionable action has raised hackles and invited strong criticism from several quarters. When FIFA has barred football players from displaying any kind of political logo on their jersey or from showing any political affiliation through their speech or gesture, then why is FIFA itself not following its own rules ?

Many critics pointed out that the award came less than 24 hours after the Trump administration carried out a deadly air strike in the Caribbean. Craig Mokhiber, a former director of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who has campaigned to suspend Israel from world football because of its genocidal war in Gaza, called the decision to honour Trump, a “truly shameful development”.

Double standards on Israel

What is more, FIFA chief Infantino has steadfastly refused to take action against Israel, arguing that football “cannot solve geopolitical” issues. But while presenting the prize on Friday, Infantino expressed support for Trump’s international deals, including the so-called Abraham Accords that established ties between some Arab countries and Israel without resolving the question of the Israel – Palestine conflict.

Craig Mokhiber told Al Jazeera: “Not satisfied with two years of FIFA complicity in genocide in Palestine, Infantino and his cronies have now invented a new ‘Peace Prize’ in order to curry favour with Donald Trump. He added that the award also aims to cover up Trump’s “disgraceful record” of support to Israel, his deadly strikes on vessels in the Caribbean Sea, and “gross violations of human rights” inside the US.

But the FIFA head Infantino appears to have forged strong ties with Trump. Infantino has been a regular guest at the White House, and in October, he attended a ceremony with Trump to formalise the Gaza truce in Egypt.

Two years ago, Infantino had warned against using football to stoke divisions among the different nations. He had said: “There’s no more powerful tool than sport to unite the people. We have to protect the political neutrality of sport and its noble values.” But today the FIFA boss stands exposed as a person who is twisting the world’s most popular sport into a political tool to serve his own needs.