Opinion

FIFA Invents a Peace Prize for Trump After He Fails to Win the Real One

FIFA has awarded Donald Trump a newly created “Peace Prize” at a lavish ceremony in Washington, a move critics say has nothing to do with peace and everything to do with flattery. Announced just weeks before the event and handed to Trump after his failed bid for the Nobel Peace Prize, the award has been derided as an invented honour designed to soothe a bruised ego. FIFA president Gianni Infantino’s effusive praise, Trump’s self-congratulatory acceptance speech, and the moment he placed the medal around his own neck have fuelled accusations that the organisation has turned peace into a performative accessory, cheapening both the concept and its own claims of political neutrality.

After Donald Trump failed to secure the Nobel Peace Prize, FIFA quietly created its own “Peace Prize” and gave it to him anyway. The move has been widely mocked as a consolation award masquerading as global virtue.

President of FIFA since 2016, Gianni Infantino is a Swiss-Italian football administrator who has overseen the expansion of the World Cup, deepened FIFA’s commercial reach, and courted close relationships with powerful political leaders. A polarising figure, he has repeatedly been criticised for blurring the line between sport and politics while presiding over an organisation still recovering from historic corruption scandals.