FIFA President Gianni Infantino Wins "Football Climate Impact Prize"

FIFA President Infantino’s steadfast commitment to expanding football’s impact on the world’s climate has been recognised with a special new award, Fossil Free Football’s “Football Climate Impact Prize”.

Infantino’s crowning achievement is the sale of the world’s biggest platform, the FIFA World Cup, to the world’s biggest polluter, Saudi state oil company Aramco. Despite player backlash, and at a time when renewable energy is booming and 89% of people want climate action, Aramco will now have a unique chance to promote oil to billions of fans as FIFA’s “major worldwide partner”. 

Infantino is also overseeing what experts have described as the most polluting World Cup in history. It will not only promote Aramco, but will have far more polluting air travel than ever, as attendees fly across an entire continent, to more matches, in more host cities, than any previous edition. Like this summer’s US hosted Club World Cup, players and fans will also be hugely exposed to dangerous weather, with 10 out of 16 cities potentially breaching safe-play heat limits. 

Once a master of greenwashing, the FIFA President has now dropped the act in favour of full-throated support for his fossil fuel friends. He once held up a “green card for the planet”, declared that FIFA would halve its emissions by 2030 and committed to ‘promote responsible consumption’ as a member of the UN Sports For Climate Action Framework. His claim that the Qatar World Cup was ‘carbon neutral’ was ruled “misleading” by a Swiss regulator while the much publicised ‘donation’ of a ‘recyclable’ stadium never actually occurred. In reality, years of cosying up to Vladimir Putin, the rulers of Qatar, Mohammed bin Salman and President Donald Trump have ensured the world’s favourite sport is a mere plaything for oil funded authoritarians. 

Infantino’s impact is typified by his skilful championing of Saudi Arabia. Internationally isolated after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, its FIFA facilitated football takeover has helped it rebuild soft power. Soft power that is put to use in blocking international climate action. Infantino has handed Saudi Arabia the 2034 World Cup, platforms its pro-oil advertising campaigns and regularly appears alongside its leaders as well as their Trump administration allies. 

Mr. Infantino exemplifies values of teamwork, loyalty and dedication to the cause of short term revenue raising and climate impact. He is truly ‘uniting the world’ in climate chaos.

While Fossil Free Football realises that Mr Infantino is preoccupied with his own prizegiving ceremony, it is sure that his Qatari private jet will be on hand to collect the Football Climate Impact Prize he so richly deserves. 

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Don’t get confused: this is a satirical award, given to Gianni Infantino in response to his FIFA Peace Prize.