On December 5, at the draw for the 2026 men’s World Cup finals at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, FIFA president Gianni Infantino presented United States President Donald Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. “This is what we want from a leader – a leader that cares about the people,” Infantino told the president from the stage. “You definitely deserve the first FIFA Peace Prize.”Three days earlier, Trump used the closing minutes of a White House cabinet meeting to call Somalis “garbage”. “Their country is no good for a reason … Their country stinks, and we don’t want them in our country,” he said. Many at that time recalled Trump’s 2018 remarks about African countries being “shithole”.The problem with what happened in December is not just the absurdity of granting the US president a “peace prize”. It is that his clear racist attitude towards a whole continent has been translated into policies which will affect the African countries that qualified for the World Cup. And yet, there is no reaction from FIFA, and more importantly, no reaction from the Confederation of African Football (CAF).Four nations whose teams will play in the US are on Trump’s travel ban list; two are African: Senegal and the Ivory Coast. Haiti – the third – has a populatio …
