Political Football

When Donald Trump received the first-ever FIFA Peace Prize (relax, I'll get to the absurdity of that moment in a couple of paragraphs), he said something logical to the assembled audience.  No, really.

Noting how FIFA is the international governing body of soccer, the sport the rest of the world calls "football," Trump said that it doesn't make sense why we call that game the NFL governs football, when soccer is really football, a game where the players move the ball with their feet.  He has a point.  American football, by contrast, isn't a game where you advance the ball with your feet.  You only kick the ball to score an extra point after a touchdown or a field goal.  Apart from the kickoff, the players advance the ball holding it in an arm, because the ball's odd, pistachio-like shape makes impossible to kick without a tee.

That out of the way, I am happy to declare that the FIFA Peace Prize - which FIFA president Gianni Infantino created to curry favor with Trump after the Nobel Prize went not to Trump but to a Venezuelan activist - is the biggest crock and the greatest con job ever created in the history of sports.  If Trump had actually done something to promote peace, this naked display of butt-kissing would at least have the veneer of plausibility. Instead, he's bombing Venezuelan boats, sending ICE agents and National Guard units to patrol cities, and giving Putin the green light to take land from Ukraine and possibly annex the Baltics.  It's all about stroking his ego.

And that mean be a problem for Infantino.  Newsweek reports that the human rights group FairSquare is requesting that FIFA's executive committee investigate Infantino for a breech of the association's ethics code by so blatantly kissing it to Trump. 

"FIFA's credibility hinges on its commitment to political neutrality, a principle designed to keep global soccer free from partisan influence," Newsweek's Daniel Orton wrote.  "If its president is found to have breached this rule by honoring a sitting U.S. president, it could undermine trust in the organization's independence and raise questions about whether FIFA's leadership is susceptible to political favoritism."

The U.S. games in next year's North America World Cup are going to be an absolute disaster, with foreign visitors shunning the matches out of fear of being arrested by ICE and with the U.S. men's national team being booed on American soil - by American fans.  It will be a dark moment in international sports, the darkest at least until the 2028 Olympics open in Los Angeles. 

P.S.  You know those letters I wrote to 2028 Olympic official Janet Evans and International Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry saying that the 2028 Games ought to be held in some other country?  Neither swimming champion has responded to me. 

One good thing has come from this prize.  At least an American male won something from FIFA.