When FIFA president Gianni Infantino handed President Donald Trump the governing body’s first-ever Peace Prize last December, the move drew plenty of criticism from around the soccer world. Less than a year later, the future of that award is very much in doubt.
FIFA’s leadership has now asked one of its committees to decide whether the prize should ever be handed out again. And according to one FIFA Council member, that review will even look at whether Trump should have received it in the first place.
Peace Prize Backlash
FIFA created the Peace Prize last November, saying it would honor “individuals who, through their unwavering commitment and their special actions, have helped to unite people all over the world in peace.”
Infantino then presented the award to Trump at the World Cup draw in Washington, D.C., in December. Trump called it “truly one of the great honors of my life.”
To make matters worse, less than three months later, the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, which led to a broader regional conflict.
Some national federations weren’t thrilled with the award, either. In June, Norway Football Federation president Lise Klaveness said her federation had written a letter to FIFA supporting a formal complaint over the Peace Prize.
FIFA reviewing the prize
At a meeting in Zurich on Thursday, the FIFA Council tasked its Football Social Responsibility Committee with deciding whether the Peace Prize will be awarded in the future and, if so, whether its criteria will change, according to Eli Kronenberg of Front Office Sports.
The 23-member committee is chaired by Myanmar Football Federation president Zaw Zaw, with former Argentina and Inter Milan defender Javier Zanetti serving as his deputy.
FIFA Council member and English Football Association president Debbie Hewitt told reporters after the meeting that the committee will consider “whether there should have been [a prize], how the decision was taken to award it, and whether there should be another one.”
The White House, however, is still standing by the award.
“President Trump’s Peace through Strength foreign policy is a tried-and-true approach that keeps America safe and deters global threats that has already ended eight wars in less than a year,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told Front Office Sports. “There is no one else in the world more deserving of FIFA’s first-ever Peace Prize than President Trump.”
Infantino Under Fire
The Peace Prize wasn’t the only headache for Infantino on Thursday. The council also discussed his FIFA Forward Enterprise plan, which would have created a commercial subsidiary of the World Cup and sold shares of it to private investors.
Infantino apologized for “the mistakes that we made in relation to the communication and consultation process related to the FIFA Forward Enterprise Project,” he told reporters. He also asked council members to submit questions in writing, which he said he would answer at the next meeting in December.
That apology didn’t seem to win over everyone. German Football Association president Bernd Neuendorf made it clear that he still has concerns about Infantino’s leadership.
“We asked a great many critical questions, but in my view, there were no satisfactory answers,” Neuendorf said.
Infantino is currently running unopposed for a fourth and final term in March, even as UEFA president Aleksander Čeferin has called for him to step down. Clearly, though, the pushback against his decisions isn’t going away anytime soon.
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