FIFA, the world soccer body, said this month it would start giving out an annual prize to reward “individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace”.
Right off the bat, who might be the individual who might win this new award?
One wonders.
Let’s take a wild guess.
Could it be US President Donald Trump?
Asked whether Trump would win the FIFA prize, world football’s president Gianni Infantino laughed and said: “On the 5th of December, you will see.”
We can see it already.
There was no indication that potential recipients for the FIFA prize would be limited to the world of sports. Secondly, Infantino and Trump have been close for some time now. Third, Trump did not win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize which he has yearned to get his hands on (the honour befell María Corina Machado, a pro-democracy activist in Venezuela), and lastly, Infantino had openly said Trump should get the Nobel.
On 9 October, the day before the Nobel Prize was announced, Infantino wrote on Instagram that Trump “definitely deserves” it for his efforts towards a peace deal in Gaza.
The very next day, however, the Nobel committee snubbed Trump and gave Machado the thumbs up.
Next came the FIFA announcement launching its very own peace prize.
It would not be a stretch to imagine that Infantino concocted this new prize to compensate Trump for not winning the real thing to curry favour with the president and his administration.
It might even have happened that the prize was Trump’s idea, so desperate he is to win anything that shimmers.
Whoever’s idea it was, all the signs point to Trump winning it. Infantino has been a frequent White House visitor and was even invited to join Trump on several recent important foreign trips, including the signing of the Abraham Accords, a visit last month to Egypt after the Gaza cease-fire took effect, and a summit with Asian leaders in Malaysia two weeks ago.
FIFA opened an office in the Trump Tower in Manhattan in July this year. Also, Trump’s daughter Ivanka was appointed on the board of a $100 million education project partly funded by 2026 World Cup ticket sales.
So now FIFA seems poised to give Trump a new peace prize which it made up just for him.
It really sounds like the award was created in response to Trump’s desperate quest for a Nobel Peace Prize that he has been aggressively campaigning for since his first term. When Machado was announced the winner, Trump and his White House issued a furious response, claiming the Nobel Committee “place[s] politics over peace”.
Trump also complained that his predecessor, former president Barack Obama, received the award in 2009 for what he said amounted to “doing nothing”.
Certainly, winning the FIFA award would be much easier than the Nobel. The Nobel Peace Prize has a long history, and the five-person Norwegian Nobel Committee selects winners after a rigorous, months-long review process. In contrast, the criteria for the new FIFA peace prize looks easy enough.
Has Trump taken “special actions” to unite people? Why not? He and Infantino will attest to that.
But the award feels like another chapter in their mutually beneficial relationship rather than a sincere peace initiative and calls into question the prize’s authenticity.
If this new peace prize aims to compete with the Nobel peace award, let’s note that FIFA has none of the gravitas or authority of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. Who decided for Infantino that he suddenly veers from his post as football’s boss to peace anointer?
Infantino wrote on his Instagram account “it’s fundamental to recognize the outstanding contribution of those who work hard to end conflicts and bring people together in a spirit of peace.”
Trump himself has claimed to have ended eight wars since taking over as president in the second term (although the water dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia is just that — a dispute, not a war. Nevertheless, the issue was put on Trump’s list of scalps).
Infantino and Trump have built a strong alliance heading into next year’s World Cup, which will be jointly hosted by the US, Canada and Mexico.
The award will be announced on 5 December when the World Cup draw is held at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, the arts venue that Trump has reshaped this year.
It’s no coincidence that the FIFA peace prize will be awarded during the World Cup finals draw. The draw is to determine the fixtures for next year’s tournament that takes place between 11 June and 19 July. A global audience of one billion who will be watching would suit Trump just fine, however, it will be a departure from tradition for the draw, which is typically exclusively focused on football.
There is clear hypocrisy in this award. It’s hard for FIFA to explain how it can allow itself to give out a peace prize when it allows Israel to compete in international football even as Israel’s actions in the Palestinian territories have resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths in what can only be called a genocide. It is a stark contradiction which undermines FIFA’s proclaimed mission of promoting peace.
There is also this: since FIFA is engaging in prize-giving unrelated to football, it’s easy to imagine a football world giving away prizes for peace and other things. So, UEFA can start awarding its own peace prize. La Liga might award the Person of the Year, the EPL the Best Dressed, and Serie A the Most Eligible Bachelor.
Most non-sports awards given out by sports organisations usually have something to do with community service. This is the first time we hear of sports offering a global peace prize.
The FIFA council reportedly had no input in the inception of this prize so it is presumed it was entirely conceived by Infantino. Will the peace prize be voted upon by just Infantino? Any judges, or is the whole thing orchestrated by just one person? Is this a celebrity contest?
Once again politics have entered sports.
For a long time now it has been very difficult to separate the two. Politics enters sports through athletes in the US kneeling during the national anthem protesting police brutality, political figures using sports for endorsements, and governments using major sporting events for propaganda, boycotting events like the Olympics or hosting events to improve their global image.
But this time sports has opened the door for politics.
More than a genuine effort to promote peace, the FIFA peace prize appears to be a political stunt designed to boost FIFA’s image alongside that of Trump, a consolation that triggers questions about Infantino’s motivations and allegiances.
Gianni Infantino, the head of world football, you should stick to football.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 20 November, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
Short link: