Gianni Infantino’s FIFA is not a neutral arbiter caught helpless between warring states; it is an active political actor that repeatedly chooses power, profit and proximity to authoritarians over the safety and dignity of the people its own statutes claim to protect.
Infantino’s response to Iran’s demand to move their 2026 fixtures out of the United States is presented as lofty, principled neutrality “all participating teams competing as per the match schedule announced” and “FIFA can’t solve geopolitical conflicts.” Strip away the PR varnish and it is something far uglier - a governing body telling a targeted nation to shut up and play in the backyard of the man who has openly said their presence would not be “appropriate” for their “life and safety.”
Iran’s federation has been clear, they will refuse to play in the US after US and Israeli strikes on their country, and after Donald Trump himself publicly undermined any guarantee of security for their players and staff. FIFA’s answer is not to demand that the host nation meet its own obligations on safety and non‑discrimination, not to invoke the lofty human rights clauses it waved around when expelling Russia, but to insist the schedule is sacred and the victim must adapt. “We will continue to promote peace,” Infantino bleats, as he knowingly sends Iranian players and fans into a country whose president has turned them into target practice.
Call it what it is, this is not peace‑making, it is capitulation. It is FIFA siding with the aggressor and telling the victim that if they don’t fancy walking into the lion’s den, they are the ones spoiling the tournament.
FIFA set a precedent with Russia that it now desperately hopes everyone will forget. In 2022, Russian teams were expelled from FIFA competitions on the grounds that their state’s invasion of Ukraine “endanger[ed] the security and integrity of football,” a decision lauded as a moral awakening from an organisation long drenched in graft. The message was supposed to be simple - wage aggressive war, shred the UN Charter, and you forfeit your place in the global game.
That standard, as you have already forensically argued, now hangs over 2026 like a guillotine. The United States is not some harmless, benevolent host whose only sin is over‑priced beer. It is a serial violator of the very “internationally recognised human rights” FIFA claims to uphold, from ICE’s systematic abuses of migrants and asylum seekers to a domestic security environment drenched in gun violence and political extremism – all directly relevant to the safety of visiting fans and teams.
Layer on top of that Washington’s aggressive foreign policy – from regime‑change adventurism against fellow FIFA members to open threats against neighbours – and you are left with conduct that, by FIFA’s own Russia standard, “endangers the security and integrity of football.” Yet where Russia was cast out, the US is rewarded with the biggest World Cup in history, a commercial bonanza rubber‑stamped by the same president who now tells Iran that fixtures are immovable and politics none of his concern.
The double standard is so grotesque it ceases to be hypocrisy and becomes policy. It says, if you are a pariah state, your war is a football issue; if you are Washington or its allies, your wars are geopolitics, regrettable but irrelevant to FIFA’s “bridge‑building.” Red cards for Russia, free passes for the United States – and everyone is meant to pretend that is anything other than raw power dressed up as principle.
Nowhere is FIFA’s moral bankruptcy more exposed than in its posture toward Israel and Palestine. While you document in brutal detail how Israel’s actions in Gaza amount to genocide, tens of thousands of civilians killed, Palestinian footballers murdered or maimed, entire communities destroyed – Infantino’s FIFA maintains business as usual. Israel remains in the fold, shielded from meaningful sanction, its federation gently fined for “discrimination and racist abuse” while a Palestinian call to suspend Israel from world football is ignored.
Compare that indulgence with the speed and severity of the response to Russia. One state’s aggression was enough to erase it from the game; another’s relentless, televised obliteration of a trapped population is met with money‑laundering fines and procedural waffle. The message to Palestinians is unmistakable - your dead do not count, your shattered pitches do not matter, your players are collateral damage in a conflict FIFA would rather not see.
When Infantino insists that FIFA “can’t solve geopolitical conflicts” but will use football to “build bridges and promote peace,” he is not neutrally refusing to intervene. He is choosing which victims are inconvenient and which aggressors are profitable. He is saying that expelling Russia is a noble stand, but confronting Israel or the United States over Gaza or Iran is a step too far for an organisation addicted to US broadcast money, Gulf sports‑washing, and the political cover of Western power.
It is not that FIFA cannot act; it is that Infantino will not, because consistently applying his own statutes would mean dragging his favourite partners into the dock.
If there were any doubt left that FIFA’s moral language is a cheap prop, the newly minted FIFA Peace Prize obliterates it. I have already laid out how this award was personally created by Infantino for Trump as a consolation trinket for a man who failed to strong‑arm his way to a Nobel prize. It is a made‑to‑measure trinket, created not to honour genuine conflict resolution but to burnish the reputations of Trump and Infantino in a single, nauseating photo‑op.
That Infantino would even consider honouring a figure whose political brand rests on xenophobia, authoritarian posturing and explicit threats against nations like Iran tells you everything about what this prize was really about. It was not about peace, it was about access. It is about the FIFA president ingratiating himself with a US leader whose goodwill secures him stadiums, visas, law‑and‑order theatre and television gold. It’s about Brand Infantino – the self‑styled global statesman – hitching himself to Brand Trump, the self‑styled deal‑maker, and using football as the stage for their mutual vanity.
In that light, his Iran comments make perfect, chilling sense. Of course Infantino will not demand that Trump guarantee Iranian safety, or that the US clean up its immigration regime, or that Israel face meaningful sanction. He is in the business of flattering presidents and despots, not confronting them. When he talks about “building bridges,” he means corporate suites and VIP corridors between Trump Tower, Riyadh, Doha and Zurich.
That is why the Peace Prize is so obscene. It weaponises the language of peace to reward the very people whose actions are dragging the world closer to permanent conflict. It turns football’s supposed moral authority into a cheap PR chip in Infantino’s networking game.
There was a time when calling FIFA corrupt meant talking about brown envelopes, vote‑rigging and dodgy construction contracts. Under Infantino, the rot has evolved. The bribery is no longer just financial; it is moral. FIFA’s statutes and human rights policies are prostituted, handed out selectively to punish those out of favour and shield those whose cheques clear.
In expelling Russia and indulging the United States, FIFA has announced that its red lines are not about international law but about alignment with Western power. In turning a blind eye to Israel’s devastation of Gaza while offering up a few disciplinary fig leaves, it has told Palestinians their lives are worth less than broadcast rights. In demanding that Iran play in a country whose president has publicly questioned their safety, it has made clear that “security for all participants” is an optional extra when the host is too rich and powerful to offend.
And in minting a bespoke Peace Prize for Donald Trump, Infantino has crossed a line even his predecessors did not dare approach. Blatter’s FIFA was a bazaar of backhanders; Infantino’s is a diplomatic court, where despots, strongmen and “populists” are fêted as partners in “unity” while the people crushed under their boots are told to keep politics out of football.
This is why any argument that the USA, by FIFA’s own logic, should be stripped of 2026 is unanswerable. If Russia’s aggression merited expulsion, then Washington’s aggression, its human rights abuses, and its failure to guarantee safety for teams like Iran must carry the same consequence. The fact everyone knows that will never happen – that the World Cup will not be moved, that Trump will not be snubbed, that Infantino will keep grinning in the VIP box – is the final proof that FIFA has ceased to be a governing body and become a protection racket for power.
FIFA today is not merely failing victims. It is actively helping to launder their oppressors. That is not neutrality. It is complicity.
Bang on as per usual Andy, FIFA are a disgusting organisation where corruption is handed out like badges of honour.
I thought Blatter was the bottom of the barrel, then came Platini but Infantino has won the race to the bottom. They don't even try to hide their behaviour, so brazen and couldn't give a shit who knows how corrupt they are.
You have put into words all that I have been feeling.