Finally, a peace prize Trump deserves

Thank. God. I was getting bored of asking, begging, of the endless petitions and protests. Fifa has finally announced its own Peace Prize, to be awarded at December’s draw for the Donald Trump World Cup, in front of Donald Trump at the Kennedy Center, which will by then likely be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center, by its new chair, Donald Trump. The tension of which dip-dyed dictator might win is almost too great to bear.

The “Fifa Peace Prize – Football Unites the World” will be presented to “individuals who, through their unwavering commitment and their special actions, have helped to unite people all over the world in peace and consequently deserve a special and unique recognition”.

World football’s top officials generously announced it would be “bestowed on behalf of all football-loving people from all around the world”, apparently speaking for, by their calculations, “more than five billion of the world’s population”, a figure extracted from the same crevice as its prize.

You want to assume someone involved in the Donald Trump Peace Prize’s creation must have the self-awareness to know anyone genuinely deserving would not want to win it, although perhaps not. Fifa’s council reportedly had no input on its inception. It was entirely concocted by president Gianni Infantino, for president Gianni Infantino. You know Infantino, the one who looks like the oleaginous result of perverse experimentation on an earthworm, like someone synthesised pure greed and squeezed it sausage-style into a gimp suit made of human skin.

This opens up a brave new world for sporting organisations to honour the Prince of Peace. The Professional Darts Corporation Person of the Year? The Formula 1 Prize for Environmental Sustainability? The Lance Armstrong Award for Sportsmanship? The Women’s Football Awards are yet to hand out their Ally of the Year 2025, after the roaring success of 2024 winner Jermaine Jenas.

Now, Fifa and Infantino have always done shamelessness and craven self-interest, but this is a new frontier in human obsequiousness, one giant leap for sycophancy. Infantino, proud owner of the Russian Order of Friendship personally awarded by Vladimir Putin, said earlier this month that “Trump definitely deserves the Nobel peace prize”, something he clearly believes so strongly he is willing to rectify the injustice himself. And maybe this is just the logical progression for football, arguably the world’s most popular single thing, the new supranational core of human morality.

But then what’s more humiliating: no peace prize or one concocted just to soothe your infantile ego? And where does it go from here? Is this something we’re going to have to endure every December, like Mariah Carey and uncles? We can only assume the Special Don beat out stiff competition from Mohammed Bin Salman and Matt Le Tissier, but they never settled anything between Azerbaijan and Albania. There’s always next year, Mo!

Perhaps the strangest element is that there is little evidence Trump has any interest in football as a sport, as opposed to it as a cultural superpower and attention industry, as the modern opiate of the masses.

Yet in July, Fifa became the second football governing body to base an office in Trump Tower, after Concacaf – the North American equivalent of Uefa – which was based on the 17th floor until 2013 at the behest of its then-general secretary, the late Falstaffian fraudster Chuck Blazer. After the World Cup finishes, the US will return to its traditional position as a footballing punchline, but Infantino seems unlikely to willingly concede his proximity to the seat of power. At the America Business Forum in Miami last Wednesday he said of Trump: “He does things. He does what he says. He says what he thinks. He actually says what many people think as well, but maybe don’t dare to say and that’s why he’s so successful.”

The under-explored option here is that Gianni Infantino has created an own-brand Nobel Peace Prize to award to Gianni Infantino, the only feasible alternative to his “really close friend” Trump. In Miami, Infantino was introduced by a video about the Qatar World Cup: “Under pressure, Gianni Infantino stood at the centre, leading with resolve, listening when it mattered, proving that leadership isn’t about avoiding the storm, it’s about standing tall within it.” Earlier this year, he said of a football: “This is a magic object that transforms the face of children into happy children, into smiley children.”

Today I feel God. Today I feel Alfred Nobel. Today I fell through the looking glass.

Photograph by Andrew Harnik/ AP