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For a long time, FIFA press releases were emails that you could skim and quickly delete from your inbox. There were new sponsorship deals with fast food chains and legendary five-a-side football games to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the title rescue.
No longer. Reading this winter was like being on the road to madness.
Last Friday there was a statement from Fifa’s communications department that, in a sensible world, would of course have been a fake.
“FIFA and the Peace Council begin a strategic collaboration to advance reconstruction and peace through football,” it said.
This is often talked about It is important for democracy to retain the ability to be horrified when totalitarian powers take power. In the year of disgrace 2026, this quality is perhaps more important than ever.
But it’s difficult. You become indifferent no matter what you do. The previously unthinkable is becoming the new normal.
FIFA, a politically neutral football organization with 211 member countries according to its statutes, has now officially joined forces with the most unreliable political force in the world – Donald Trump.
As FIFA President Gianni Infantino When he attended the first meeting of the Peace Council in Washington on February 19, he appeared wearing a red cap emblazoned with “USA” and “45-47.” The numbers represent Donald Trump’s two terms as the 45th and 47th President of the United States.
Now FIFA, in collaboration with Trump’s band of obedient autocrats, will build 50 mini-pitch fields and a “national arena” with capacity for 20,000 spectators, as well as a football academy in Gaza. The timetable for the various projects ranges from six months to three years. Israeli members were reportedly present in Washington at the opening of the meeting, but not a single Palestinian.
Gianni Infantino’s unabashed cozying up to Donald Trump last year culminated – or so it was believed at the time – in the awarding of the association’s newly established Peace Prize in December.
Craziness! Mania! What the hell are they doing?!
But once the initial outrage died down and Infantino brushed aside the criticism (by simply ducking, as usual), it wasn’t hard to take the next step.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Infantino then praised Donald Trump’s highly controversial – among us: crazy – peace advice, which was rejected by every Western democracy.
Peace is good, FIFA is for peace, was the argument.
Target group: A group of kindergarten children?
The Greenlanders had it easy holding back laughter. Ukrainians too, since Infantino declared he wanted to reopen European football to Russian teams as Russia’s full-scale invasion enters its fifth year.
– I suggest that Infantino visit Ukraine to see the destruction with his own eyes instead of making such an irresponsible statement from a distance. Letting Russia in while Ukraine is suffering from this war is a betrayal of the idea of sport as a family, Shakhtar Donetsk CEO Sergei Palkin said this week.
But in addition to the real political consequences of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s sportswashing, Infantino also does something to all of us who are not in the direct line of fire: Him Gas lighters leads us to a world order in which people begin to doubt their own judgment.
Because it isn’t anymore There are some norms that regulate how football’s most powerful body can behave – which, by the way, is exactly in line with developments in the White House and the Kremlin – everything becomes more or less normal.
The entire football world is strangely silent about FIFA’s increasing violation of the principle of political neutrality. The chairman of the Swedish Football Association, Simon Åström, performed some advanced linguistic acrobatics when he told Expressen that he had “strong doubts” about FIFA’s peace prize.
Surely you’re thinking hard about what on earth that even means?
This week there was a welcome Exception. In just a few months, Paulo Fonseca has guided old French club Lyon from the threat of relegation to first place in the Europa League group stage. Fonseca is married to a Ukrainian and worked as a club coach in the country for three years. In an interview with L’Équipe, he says that the situation in Ukraine has only gotten worse since Donald Trump came to power, despite promises of a quick peace.
Paulo Fonseca says about the FIFA Peace Prize:
– Do you know what I felt when I saw that? I was ashamed. It’s so incredibly sad, football doesn’t deserve this. It’s a shame.
It doesn’t have to be more difficult.
