U.S. President Donald Trump accepts the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize from FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Friday, December 5, 2025, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)
After Venezuelan then-President Nicolás Maduro was captured by U.S. forces in Caracas and the Trump administration installed leftist Delcy Rodríguez as interim president, opposition leader María Corina Machado tried to curry favor with Trump by offering him her Nobel Peace Prize (which was merely symbolic, as it cannot be transferred under Peace Prize rules).
But Machado wasn't the first person to offer Trump a symbolic "peace prize": before that, in December 2025, FIFA President Gianni Infantino offered Trump the inaugural "FIFA Peace Prize." In the Daily Beast, reporter Leigh Kimmins details FIFA's "embarrassing" campaign to "sooth Trump" with a made-up peace prize.
Trump isn't shy about claiming that he deserves to win the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, and in 2025, he was disappointed when that award went to Machado.
"Gianni Infantino, the president of soccer's global governing body, FIFA, sensed an opportunity and cooked up the 'FIFA Peace Prize' to soothe Trump," Kimmins explains in the Daily Beast. "He did so because a closer relationship with the U.S. president would mean a smoother World Cup, which, in turn, would help repair his organization's image after years of fraud and neglect. Infantino, a former lawyer from Switzerland, had lobbied for Trump to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but quickly devised a plan when he was overlooked, according to The New York Times."
Kimmins continues, "Just weeks after the snub, senior officials at the organization, a nonprofit with billions of dollars in its coffers, were informed of the plan. According to the Times, they asked how much time they would have to pull off the ingenious stroke of bootlickery. They also needed to know what the criteria for the award would be and how the nomination committee would be structured."
The Daily Beast reporter notes that according to a FIFA insider interviewed by the Times, the "plan was to stage a charade to please" Trump.
The World Cup draw was held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in December 2025. According to the Times, FIFA originally had Las Vegas in mind. But that was before "Paolo Zampolli, a longtime Trump ally serving as a presidential envoy, forced Infantino to reconsider," according to Kimmins.
"Some soccer officials were angered by the circus, saying it blew up FIFA's claims of political neutrality," Kimmins notes. "The president of Norway's soccer federation, who is a human rights lawyer, declared that the prize breached FIFA's rules on political neutrality and announced that Norway would back an ethics complaint against Infantino and his shilling."