By James Dostoyevsky
December 10 – I’ve been following FIFA and its shenanigans for more than two decades from up close, and there have been many.
They include: the Trump Tower apartment for Chuck’s cats, the desire for women to wear shorter shorts, the endemic readiness to deliver bribes for votes, the senseless dragging of Becks to Trinidad for an England soft-bribe, the ridiculousness of an Anti-racism Committee that never met once under Sebastian Coe’s “leadership” (not a single time), the condescending attitudes by South American football Grandees towards Midde Eastern and Arab leaders (whom one specific specimen loved to call “sand niggers”), the total sell-out of the game to the money-men (the English Premier League is now majority owned by US money), or the constant celebration of its own “achievements” by lifting them up to new heights, senselessly claiming that it is a global force for the good.
FIFA has grown. From a 40 million Swiss Franc operation when Sepp Blatter first joined as its technical director, to a muti-billion dollar behemoth when he quit as President.
But this guy, GI Joe, who now runs FIFA (into the ground), has driven the institution to altogether new levels of ridicule.
He has combined the kissing of a convicted felon’s ass, with the politicisation of a true global sports platform.
The Nobel elite in Oslo and Stockholm decided to award their ‘Peace’ Prize to woman rather than a guy who presently threatens to invade Venezuela, a sovereign country, only to steal its oil; a guy who bombed Iran because his pal, the Zionist one, told him to; who financed the Gaza massacres and delivered bombs and missiles to the tune of billions of dollars for a genocide; the very same guy who, to this days, robs Syria of its oil and has so far slaughtered more than 90 fishermen and other civilians in international waters, claiming that they were narco-traffickers.
Introduce FIFA and its ‘cringe master’ of a president, Gianni Infantino, the reinventor of sycophancy and sportswasher par excellence. It is deeply depressing to see the drop to the current depth of ridicule he has engineered for his own presidency and organisation, but it seems he couldn’t help himself.
The ultimate ‘MAGA fanboy’ who scooped to new lows in FIFA’s long history of self‑inflicted scandals, created a Peace Award for his bestie who was so very hurt that all his bombings failed to deliver a peace prize after all. Now he has one. How very cool, how very American, how very FIFA, how very Infantino.
One guy on Twitter won the Award of Hilarity, in my opinion, when he tweeted: “I’m old enough to remember when FIFA was about kicking balls, not sucking them”. For this alone, ‘Blade of the Sun’, whoever he may be, deserves his own Twitter Award.
Infantino, an underprivileged kid from the high valleys of the Canton of Valais, son of Italian immigrants, has a very special gift: he can screw up a one-car funeral without any special effort. There are limits even to sycophancy, one would have thought, but no. It was a “pathetic”, “embarrassing” and a “made‑up” peace prize created just to flatter Trump.
What it did, is pair criticism of Trump with contempt for FIFA’s leadership. If you thought that this FIFA was any different from the “old FIFA”, think again. It’s worse. Far worse.
FIFA’s, or rather Infantino’s ‘Peace Prize’ bullshit, has triggered a mix of anger, ridicule, and disbelief, with most seeing the FIFA Peace Prize for Trump as a bad joke and a humiliation for football. But hey, the Village People did perform, didn’t they. So, all good. Or is it.
At a time when Trump, the self-annointed Peace President, threatens to attack and invade yet another country, and have its President Maduro killed, another Maduro, Miguel Poiares Maduro, former Portuguese government minister and ex‑chair of FIFA’s Governance Committee, says that Infantino’s behaviour breaches FIFA’s duty of political neutrality. Kind words, considering.
Meanwhile, Human‑rights advocates called the prize “shameful” and “vulgar”, arguing that FIFA was whitewashing Trump’s record on human rights and foreign policy while refusing to act on serious issues in world football, such as conflicts and alleged abuses elsewhere. But after Qatar and soon Saudi, the whitewashing machine of global football has learnt from where the FIFA money comes, hasn’t it.
Inventing your own peace prize and immediately giving it to yourself, highlights how self‑serving the whole spectacle looked – and is. Infantino, is not bothered, and his conduct during the embarrassing ceremony was among the most unpalatable displays of a desperate fanboy, trying to make a point where the only point that was made is ridicule, vulgarity and pain.
Panem et circensis. Yet the plebeains are not amused.
James Dostoyevsky was a Washington-based author until the end of 2018, where he reported on sports politics and socio-cultural topics. He returned to Europe in 2019 and continues to follow football politics – presently with an emphasis on the Middle East, Europe and Africa.