FIFA Peace Prize or political theatre?

“Who will get your vote?” asked the email from FIFA. Soccer’s governing body wanted me to help select the world’s outstanding male and female outfield players and goalkeepers for the Best FIFA Football Awards.

FIFA, however, did not ask me who should win the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize. This newly created honor will be awarded by FIFA boss Gianni Infantino in December at the World Cup draw, which will take place at the Kennedy Center in Washington. We don’t know who will win, but here’s a hint: If you don’t live in a partially demolished dwelling with golden bathroom fixtures at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., you are probably not in the running.

Asking who will win the FIFA Peace Prize seems a bit like asking who will win the Russian presidential election. Sure, there are other candidates, but there are lots of windows on high floors, too. Infantino is widely expected to honor President Donald Trump with another of the shiny trinkets the president loves. Even though the only ball Trump has probably ever kicked is his golf ball - when he’s moving it to cheat.

Soccer fans and members of national federations who thought of Infantino, who is Swiss, as the antidote to his endlessly compromised countryman Sepp Blatter have been hugely disappointed. They now see someone who is continuing FIFA’s odious reputation for pandering to power while trying to accumulate more of it.

In the 1978 World Cup, then-FIFA president João Havelange, a Brazilian, sold soccer’s soul to the murderous Argentina military regime, which had overthrown the government in a coup two years prior. Argentina was awarded the tournament in 1966, but Havelange allowed it to proceed despite knowing that Argentina’s generals had disappeared thousands of people during the so-called dirty war. As the Cup took place, the madres of the disappeared held regular demonstrations at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires; on the field, allegations of thrown matches and questionable refereeing tainted the championship won by a fine Argentina team. Only 50,000 foreign fans showed up, according to “Angels With Dirty Faces,” a history of Argentine soccer by Jonathan Wilson.

Blatter, Havelange’s successor, would later face allegations that FIFA was part of a bribery scheme that helped Germany beat South Africa for the 2006 tournament. Blatter then sent the 2018 World Cup to Putin’s Russia before he was forced to leave office in the aftermath of a massive scandal that ultimately landed in U.S. courts, where a number of FIFA officials were charged with crimes.

One of Infantino’s first acts as a supposed reformist was to manage the award of the World Cup to Qatar despite its sordid human rights record. He later doubled down on putting petrodollars before people, shepherding the 2034 Cup to Saudi Arabia, where free speech doesn’t exist and women are second-class citizens and whose ruler was implicated in the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

From Infantino’s point of view, handing the Cup to Qatar and Saudi Arabia is part of expanding soccer’s footprint in places where the pro game is less developed. The other term for the moves is sportswashing: allowing money to dilute the unjust behavior of unsavory rulers.

Which brings us to Trump’s America, where immigrants, and even U.S. citizens, are being disappeared off the streets in raids by federal agents. Where Trump has antagonized and targeted cohosts Canada and Mexico with an unnecessary and harmful tariff regime. And where he has threatened to move World Cup matches from San Francisco and Boston on the false pretense that these cities are being ruined by out-of-control leftists.

The president’s peacemaking qualities, too, may come as a surprise to teams from around the world. While Venezuela was trying to qualify for the Cup, Trump was busy using U.S. armed forces to kill alleged drug runners off the its coast while moving an aircraft carrier group in place for a possible attack on the country. In Europe, the nearly four-year war in Ukraine that Trump said he would end rages on. The Ukrainian team, which can still make the tournament, has had to play qualifying matches in Poland to stay safe from Russian bombs.

Meanwhile, Trump’s love for disgraced former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, who also attempted to overthrow the government after losing an election, is such that he imposed a 50 percent tariff on Brazil after Bolsonaro was convicted of that crime. Trump has also threatened Colombian President Gustavo Petro - “he’s a thug and he’s a bad guy” - with aid cuts and higher tariffs.

Very sporting, that. The World Cup is supposed to be a soccer celebration, but fans from Brazil and Colombia might have second thoughts about visiting the United States if their teams play here.

Nonetheless, Infantino is so desperate to remove the friction that Trump has created for this World Cup that he’s going way out of his way to placate him. That’s why the draw is taking place in Washington, of course, where he will get the opportunity to hand Trump a phony trophy before the real one goes to the World Cup winner. (Which isn’t going to be the U.S., something neither Infantino nor Trump can fix.)

American football’s NFL owners once rejected Trump, but global football’s ruler loves him. None of this benefits the players or the fans or FIFA’s abominable reputation. The possibility even exists that the U.S. president could be accepting the FIFA Peace Prize while the U.S. Air Force is bombing Caracas.