Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!
When María Corina Machado won this year’s Nobel peace prize for her “tireless work promoting democratic rights”, Donald Trump took the news as Maga-nanimously as you might expect. Having tirelessly run a campaign of self-promotion to ensure he won it himself, the president of the USA USA USA immediately claimed the credit for the Venezuelan opposition leader’s triumph, listed his own self-proclaimed and often dubious achievements in the field of global peacemaking and attacked the credibility of the committee who made the decision not to award the medal, cash prize and diploma to him. While security concerns mean it remains to be seen if the newly crowned Nobel laureate will emerge from hiding to pick up her accolade in person at the Oslo ceremony in December, a certain obsequious Fifa president appears hell-bent on stealing her thunder anyway. Yup, Gianni Infantino has decided to award a peace prize of his own creation in front of a global TV audience of hundreds of millions of international football fans the previous week in Washington.
A man who has for years preached the importance of keeping politics out of football, particularly when they’re the kind of politics he finds awkward or simply doesn’t like, Infantino used his platform at the America Business Forum in Miami to bang his drum about the ability of football to unite people of every colour and creed, particularly those who have a spare $5,000-plus knocking around to buy dynamically priced Geopolitics World Cup tickets. “In an increasingly unsettled and divided world, it’s fundamental to recognise the outstanding contribution of those who work hard to end conflicts and bring people together in a spirit of peace,” he parped. “Football stands for peace and on behalf of the entire football community, the Fifa Peace Prize – Football Unites The World will recognise the enormous efforts of those individuals who unite people, bringing hope for future generations.”
