Infantino’s Peace Prize To Trump Continues FIFA Presidents’ Tradition

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The other soccer boot dropped early Friday afternoon as President Trump received a Peace Prize. It wasn’t the Peace Prize that he has coveted for so long, the Nobel Peace Prize.

It was the FIFA Peace Prize.

One might call it a consolation prize.

Nothing earth-shattering there. The award had been speculated and expected for weeks that FIFA President Gianni Infantino would award the first such honor to Trump.

But it was another distressing and embarrassing moment – some might say the nadir – in the history of the FIFA presidency, which has experienced plenty of controversies that date back close to half a century.

A half hour into the two-hour 2026 World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts, Infantino announced that President Trump had won the first FIFA Peace Prize.

Infantino, who has become a staunch ally of Trump, as he has been a regular visitor to the Oval multiple times in the past year, has said he thought the U.S. president should have been given the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza.

So, the FIFA president gave him a Peace Prize.

Trump was handed a gold trophy and a medal by Infantino.

“You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize for your action, for what you have obtained in your way,” Infantino said.

To which Trump responded: “This is truly one of the great honors of my life. … Most important, I just want to thank everybody. The world is a safer place now.”

Where was the soccer connection?

But what does that have to do with soccer?

Needless to say, it was quite confounding because Trump hasn’t been known for soccer through his career. Yes, during his first term, FIFA awarded the 2026 World Cup to the U.S., Mexico and Canada.

Given what the Trump administration has been in the middle of lately, it had many an observer scratching his or her head about the award.

The administration has been shooting destroying boats in the Caribbean Sea that allegedly have been shipping drugs from Venezuela, although the U.S. and the South American country is not at war. It has claimed that Venezuela has been smuggling illegal drugs into the U.S.

There are many organizations that could be fine candidates for the FIFA Peace Prize, for their work in soccer. Ironically, Infantino’s predecessor, the disgraced Sepp Blatter, criticized the decision.

“They should not give [the award],” Blatter told the English newspaper The Telegraph on Wednesday. “Football should not give the prize of peace. One day we should receive the prize of peace because we are working for peace. Now they are discussing it in Norway, especially, because the Nobel Prize is based in Norway. In Norway, they are looking [for] who is working for peace. But here they are not working for peace. They will create a new peace award in football.

“I think that’s wrong. Football should receive it from the existing organization. But this does not go into the heads of those that are directing the football. That’s a pity. That’s a pity.”

Ruling with an iron fist

If there is one thing that we have learned one thing about FIFA presidents over the past half century, it is that they might start out with good intentions, but somewhere during their respective terms, they feel invincible and take on more power.

It began with Dr. Joao Havelange, a Brazilian who ruled over global soccer for a generation, from 1974-1998. By the end of his reign, Havelange was an autocratic ruler in so many ways. It was his way or the highway.

Since are talking about the latest World Cup draw, Havelange probably is best known to many American soccer supporters as the man who banned the great and three-time World Cup winner Pele, his countryman from the 1994 World Cup draw in Las Vegas.

Pele gets benched in Las Vegas

Havelange’s son-in-law, Ricardo Teixeira, then president of the Brazilian Soccer Confederation, had sued Pele for defamation of character. Pele had charged that a television group with which he was affiliated outbid a rival by $1 million for the rights to Brazilian World Cup matches but was not award the contract because his group had failed to pay a bribe to Teixeira.

“I want everyone to know that I have nothing against Joao Havelange or FIFA,” Pele said at a press gathering that included this writer at the time. “He is my idol since 1958. He encouraged me, sent a lot of messages to me. That is what I want everyone to understand.

“I don’t think this is a FIFA issue. I think this is a personal message from Havelange. This doesn’t change anything. This is a personal thing. I was invited and dis-invited.”

U.S. Soccer President Alan I. Rothenberg tried to convince Havelange otherwise, but to no avail.

Pele’s signing with the Cosmos in 1975 helped start the first soccer boom in the United States.

As Havelange’s reign came to an end, several FIFA insiders told this writer that they would not vote for another South American as the organization’s president.

Not that it did any good.

Some controversial moments

He was succeeded by Swiss native Blatter, who essentially was Havelange’s first lieutenant and then some as secretary general from 1981-1998, running the daily operations of FIFA. Blatter was elected president in 1998 and ran the show for 17 years before he was forced to resign due to a scandal that rocked international soccer in 2015.

Blatter started out as a champion of women’s soccer, coining the phrase, the “future is feminine” in the 1990s. He understood the enormous potential for growth of the women’s game. But he had another side that angered observers.

In 2004, he suggested that women players wear tighter shorts to promote “a more female aesthetic”.

“Let the women play in more feminine clothes like they do in volleyball,” he told The Guardian.

“They could, for example, have tighter shorts. Female players are pretty, if you excuse me for saying so, and they already have some different rules to men – such as playing with a lighter ball. That decision was taken to create a more female aesthetic, so why not do it in fashion?”

Ouch!

It should not come as a surprise that his comments were received poorly.

Only four days after he was elected for a fifth consecutive term in 2015, Blatter resigned as president, due to a corruption scandal that swept through FIFA like a cancer. There were accusations of bribery connected to the awarding of hosting rights for the 2018 World Cup to Russia and the 2022 tournament to Qatar.

“My mandate does not appear to be supported by everybody,” he said.

Blatter was succeeded by Issa Hayatou of Cameroon on an interim basis before Infantino, a FIFA’s Reform Committee member, was voted in, in 2016. He was elected to a third term in 2023.

Infantino, who was the UEFA general secretary, had promised to “kick out and punish” those responsible for the scandal.

Early on, Infantino championed women’s rights. He warned Iranian Football Federation and Islamic Republic of Iran authorities about Iranian women’s rights. In October 2019, more than 3,500 women attended Iran’s World Cup home qualifying match after FIFA assured Iranian women they would be able to attend games.

Then things changed.

The changing landscape of soccer

Infantino pushed for a 32-team Club World Cup. The inaugural tournament was played earlier this year in the USA, as a forerunner to the 2026 World Cup. It wasn’t warmly welcomed by U.S. soccer fans. Dynamic ticket pricing and teams being forced to play midday in the heat contributed to the discontent.

There also were fears that the players were getting run into the ground with another off-season competition.

Infantino also pushed for a 48-team World Cup, which the U.S., Mexico and Canada will co-host next year, up from 16 teams from the 2022 tourney.

And now the FIFA Peace Prize, which has been ridiculed in the media, by fans and by Blatter.

“He has disappeared,” Blatter was quoted by The Telegraph. “He’s in a sphere. I think he’s already in that sphere where tomorrow he will organize football in the stratosphere.”

Blatter loves soccer

Blatter claimed Infantino brought politics into soccer.

“It is a wonderful game, social, cultural – it can be economic – but it’s for the world. Because it’s the most popular game in the world,” he said. “And now they give the impression that politicians – on one side Saudi Arabia, and on the other side USA – will take over.

“I think this is not the right thing and I’m looking forward with interest now to the 2026 World Cup, how it will be played in three countries.”

Blatter claimed that Infantino had a role in cutting Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo’s suspension from two to no games, so he would not miss any World Cup matches.

“This is a principle that should not be accepted,” Blatter said, stating that disciplinary matters should be regarded as a “court.”

“You should not make decisions by the presidential decision,” he said.

Perhaps Infantino doesn’t care what anyone says about him, or he believes he has absolute power. Making member associations happy with millions of dollars certainly hasn’t hurt getting backing for re-elections.

While Havelange and Blatter have had their critics, the one thing they did at World Cup draws was to hold press conferences. The questions from the media sometimes were sharp. The two presidents answered them, although some observers might have been disappointed with the reply.

It should be noted Infantino did not hold a press conference this past week.

The question that comes to mind is what is he hiding and what is he afraid of?