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United States President Donald Trump has been awarded FIFA\u2019s newly created peace prize at the draw for the 2026 men\u2019s football World Cup.<\/p>\n
Trump, who has campaigned aggressively for a Nobel Peace Prize, thanked FIFA on Friday and called the award \u201cone of the great honours of my life\u201d.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The US leader had been heavily favoured to win the football governing body\u2019s inaugural prize.<\/p>\n He and FIFA president Gianni Infantino are close allies, and Infantino had made it clear that he thought Trump should have won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to broker a ceasefire in Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is your prize, this is your peace prize,\u201d Infantino said at the glitzy, celebrity-studded ceremony at Washington\u2019s Kennedy Center.<\/p>\n Infantino has repeatedly spoken about football as a unifier for the world, but the prize is a departure from the federation\u2019s traditional focus on sport.<\/p>\n The US, along with Canada and Mexico, will host the football tournament next year. The prime minister of Canada, Mark Carney, and the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, were at the ceremony, too.<\/p>\n In a nod to Trump\u2019s love of spectacle, Infantino, who served as master of ceremonies, had the three leaders stand behind brightly coloured podiums \u2013 game-show style \u2013 to draw their teams.<\/p>\n After the draw, they all posed for a selfie with Infantino.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will be unique, this will be stellar, this will be spectacular,\u201d Infantino said at the outset of the ceremony, referring to next year\u2019s games.<\/p>\n The men\u2019s World Cup will be held from June 11 to July 19, 2026, with a record 104 matches in 16 host cities. It will kick off with Mexico playing South Africa at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, followed by South Korea against a playoff winner.<\/p>\n The US and Canada will join the World Cup party the following day.<\/p>\n FIFA announced the annual peace prize in November, saying it would recognise \u201cindividuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace\u201d.<\/p>\n A video prior to the presentation celebrated Trump for resolving the war in Gaza and trying to end Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n The trophy, a gold-plated globe carried by upraised hands, was considerably larger than the Nobel, which is just a simple medal.<\/p>\n Trump was given a medal as well and donned it as Infantino lauded him. The president deserved the award for \u201cpromoting peace and unity around the world\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you very much. This is truly one of the great honours of my life. And beyond awards, Gianni and I were discussing this, we saved millions and millions of lives,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe world is a safer place now.\u201d<\/p>\n The US, he said, was \u201cnot doing too well\u201d before he took office, but now \u201cwe\u2019re the hottest country anywhere in the world\u201d.<\/p>\n Earlier, Trump told reporters he did not care about the prize, but noted that he had \u201csettled eight wars\u201d in his 10 months in office.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t need prizes. I need to save lives,\u201d Trump said. \u201cI saved millions and millions of lives, and that\u2019s really what I want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n The claim that Trump has ended eight wars this year is widely disputed.<\/p>\n Much work remains before most of the conflicts the president claims to have ended, including Israel\u2019s war on Gaza, can actually be considered resolved.<\/p>\n Trump received the award as he continues to face criticism from Democrats and rights groups for launching a huge US military build-up around Venezuela and ordering deadly air strikes against alleged drug-smuggling boats.<\/p>\n He has also ordered a hardline migration crackdown, threatening to move World Cup games from cities where he has sent troops and freezing asylum decisions from 19 countries \u2013 including World Cup participants Haiti and Iran.<\/p>\n It also came days after the president demeaned Somali immigrants in the US as \u201cgarbage\u201d \u2013 triggering an outcry both at home and abroad.<\/p>\n There has been little transparency around FIFA\u2019s peace prize.<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it has written to FIFA to request a list of the nominees, the judges, the criteria and the selection process \u2013 and has received no response.<\/p>\n \u201cFIFA\u2019s so-called peace prize is being awarded against a backdrop of violent detentions of immigrants, national guard deployments in US cities, and the obsequious cancellation of FIFA\u2019s own anti-racism and anti-discrimination campaigns,\u201d Minky Worden, who oversees sport for HRW, said in a statement.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n United States President Donald Trump has been awarded FIFA\u2019s newly created peace prize at the draw for the 2026 men\u2019s football World Cup. Trump, who has campaigned aggressively for a Nobel Peace Prize, thanked FIFA on Friday and called the award \u201cone of the great honours of my life\u201d. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4509,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4508"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4508\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
FIFA award under scrutiny<\/h2>\n
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