Trump, Infantino, and the FIFA Peace Prize
Perfectly Appropriate
He craves it, and, to some extent, his desire was satisfied. President Donald Trump did get a peace prize. Not the peace prize picked out by self-important Norwegian non-entities, but the inaugural curiosity of FIFA, an organisation famed for opacity, corruption and graft. What the critics missed in all of this was its sheer appositeness.
In a two-hour ceremony held on December 5 at Washington’s Kennedy Center, which included the World Cup draw for participants at next year’s games, Trump was presented with a prize few FIFA officials seem to know existed. Last month, FIFA president Gianni Infantino announced the award, expressing the view that Trump also deserved that other coveted gong, the Nobel Peace Prize. One senior FIFA official boldly told BBC Sport that the football organisation’s prize deserved serious attention: “Why can’t this be bigger than the Nobel Peace Prize? Football has huge global support, so it’s right that it recognises extraordinary efforts to bring about peace every year.”
That football – grand sport of sublimated aggression, contest and rivalries – is an agent of peace, is one of those shibboleths sporting administrators feed. Go through the records of any famous club rivalry, and peace is found wanting. Violence and politics, however, can be found in abundance. But Infantino did not become FIFA President on his mastery of such details. His formula was simple if hypocritical: athletes should play and shut up about politics, leaving it to the administrative class to do the rest.
With fawning relish, he heaped high praise on the winner. “This is what we want from a leader; a leader who cares about the people. We want to live in a safe world, in a safe environment. We want to unite – that’s what we do here today, that’s what we’ll do at the (FIFA) World Cup, Mr President.” Trump, in deserving the inaugural award, could count on Infantino’s support and that “of the entire football community – or ‘soccer’ community – to help you make peace and make sure the world prospers all over the world.”
Infantino has never been a strict observer of the dusty ethics clause stating that the organisation maintains neutrality “in matters of politics and religion” and that “all persons bound by the code remain politically neutral … in dealings with government institutions.” He has hobnobbed with the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Russia, ostensibly pursuing the footballing cause. He was the only sports leader present at the Egyptian “Summit for Peace” held in October, when a clutch of significant figures, marshalled by Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, agreed to implement the first phase of the Gaza peace plan. (There was much personal gratitude for Trump, praised as “absolutely fundamental and crucial in the [peace] process.) He has gathered a swag of awards and accolades from governments, hardly an affirmation of neutrality in any strict sense.
In keeping with the mood, Trump spoke about everything other than football. He was in the business of saving lives, and peace prizes did not matter much. (You need to get one in order to dismiss its merits.) For good measure, he had also “saved a lot [of lives], millions even.”
In keeping with the absurd occasion was the furious criticism of the choice, when its absurdity was most apt. Infantino, derided over his stance on not suspending Israel over its military operations in Gaza, was now receiving rebukes for eschewing neutrality. “Not satisfied with two years of FIFA complicity in genocide in Palestine, Infantino and his cronies have now invented a ‘peace prize’ in order to curry favour with Donald Trump,” fumed former UN official Craig Mokhiber and campaigner against Israeli’s membership of FIFA.
Andrea Florence, Executive Director of the Sports & Rights Alliance, acknowledged that the World Cup had been the political plaything of states in rinsing stained human rights records. “But FIFA is now doing the sportswashing itself. Giving this so-called FIFA ‘Peace Prize’ to US President Donald Trump with no clear criteria or process – and despite his administration’s violent detentions of immigrants, crackdowns on freedom of expression, and militarization of US cities – it’s sportswashing on steroids.”
This grumbling was bound to take a more formal shape, and it came in the form of an eight-page letter of complaint from the non-profit advocacy organisation, FairSquare. Unfortunately for the organisation, it was sent to FIFA. In the letter, the organisation demands that the ethics committee (the joke keeps giving) “investigate the circumstances surrounding the decision to introduce and award a FIFA Peace Prize and their conformity with FIFA’s procedural rules.” It makes reference to various remarks of Infantino’s, including those in an Instagram post from Trump’s inauguration on January 20 declaring that, “Together we will make not only America great again, but also the entire world”.
Studiously referencing FIFA statutes – not that this will get them far – the group goes on to state that awarding such a prize “to a sitting political leader is in and of itself a clear breach of Fifa’s duty of neutrality”. Infantino lacked the power to unilaterally determine “the organisation’s mission, strategic direction, policies and values”.
As with most things relevant to that organisation, the complaint is unlikely to get far. Politics and sport do mix, as they have always done. Infantino, chief of the world’s foremost unchallenged sporting mafia, may claim otherwise, but his tenure shows that he knows that crude reality all too well.
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