Infantino Is Turning Football Into a Corporate Circus
Who exactly does FIFA think it is fooling? The introduction of a so-called “Peace Prize Award”, an honour that no one asked for, no one respects, and no one believes in, is yet another embarrassing attempt by Gianni Infantino to crown FIFA as some sort of global moral authority. FIFA is not the Nobel Committee; it is not the UN, nor is it a serious diplomatic institution. It is, fundamentally, a governing body for football, one that has spent the last decade buried under corruption scandals, PR disasters, and commercial overreach.
And then they hand the inaugural award to Donald Trump, a man who has never watched a full 90-minute football match in his life. This decision is not just absurd; it is insulting to the sport, to its players, and to every country that treats football as a cultural lifeline rather than a political prop. To many fans, this award doesn’t symbolise peace; it symbolises FIFA’s continued descent into irrelevance and self-parody.
Infantino has turned football into a stage for corporate pageantry and global schmoozing rather than the world’s most authentic and inclusive game. Whether through bizarre awards, bloated tournaments, or endless expansion plans, he is shaping FIFA into a Fortune 500-style conglomerate that is obsessed with branding, optics, and profit. The soul of the game, the grassroots, the supporters, the players who built football into what it is, all of that has faded behind Infantino’s obsession with spectacle and no more of the days when ex-players and managers used to be ambassadors.
Let’s be honest: no football fan will take this Peace Award seriously. No ex-player will consider it an honour, and this should have been given to a player who has made a difference in the game. And no one outside the FIFA inner circle will pretend that this award has legitimacy. The more Infantino tries to attach prestige to meaningless trophies, the more he exposes his own disconnection from modern football culture.
The worst part? This isn’t an isolated incident. It fits a broader pattern. Infantino has repeatedly attempted to inflate FIFA’s power by introducing new competitions, reinventing old ones, and announcing initiatives with no footballing logic behind them. His tenure is marked by a widening gap between capital and culture, between the business interests he protects and the footballing heritage he neglects.
When the history books reflect on this era, they won’t praise the innovative tournaments or flashy ceremonies. They will remember how FIFA drifted into corporate absurdity, how credibility was traded for sponsorships, and how the leadership tried to manufacture prestige where none existed. Giving Donald Trump a Peace Award is not just tone-deaf; it is symbolic of FIFA’s identity crisis under Infantino.
The organisation is no longer content to regulate the game. It wants to reinvent itself as a global influencer, a diplomatic actor, a moral arbiter, roles it has neither the trust nor the integrity to inhabit. And in doing so, it risks becoming a joke within the sport it claims to represent.
Infantino’s legacy is becoming clearer by the day: a collection of pointless awards, hollow gestures, and self-inflicted embarrassment. Football deserves better, and so do the millions who love it for what it is, not what FIFA is pretending to be.
