{"id":639215,"date":"2026-04-29T21:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-29T21:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/639215\/"},"modified":"2026-04-29T21:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-29T21:58:09","slug":"football-president-firm-over-fifas-peace-prize-foul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/639215\/","title":{"rendered":"Football president firm over FIFA\u2019s peace prize foul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anyone who knows Lise Klaveness can attest to how she\u2019s firm on principle and her devotion to football. As president of Norway\u2019s football federation NFF, she\u2019s not wavering now in her criticism of the international football organization FIFA and its controversial president, Gianni Infantino.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Lise Klaveness is a former star football player herself who was elected president of Norway\u2019s national football federation in 2022. PHOTO: NFF<\/p>\n

Klaveness was among the few to stand up for what she calls \u201cthis beautiful game\u201d back in 2022, when she made her debut at a FIFA Congress in Qatar and challenged FIFA over corruption and human rights abuses<\/a> within international football. At that time she called for transparency and enforcement of FIFA\u2019s own rules and regulations regarding ethics in sports.<\/p>\n

Now she\u2019s making headlines again, after making it clear that NFF was backing an official complaint to FIFA\u2019s ethics committee from the human rights organization FairSquare. It claims Infantino has broken FIFA\u2019s own rules about political neutrality. The complaint stems from Infantino\u2019s awarding of a new FIFA \u201cpeace prize\u201d to US President Donald Trump last December.<\/p>\n

The prize surprised many, and was widely viewed as a means of appealing to Trump\u2019s vanity before World Cup play kicks off in June. Norway\u2019s largest newspaper Aftenposten editorialized on Wednesday that the prize was \u201cundeserved,\u201d that FIFA should avoid awarding any prizes that can be viewed as political, and that FIFA has rules that it should remain politically neutral.<\/p>\n

Most serious, according to Aftenposten, was how the prize to Trump had been arranged without being handled by FIFA\u2019s own board. \u201cThat says a lot about how (FIFA) president Gianni Infantino leads,\u201d wrote the newspaper. \u201cA small circle of people decide the most important cases. The rest of the organization is barely informed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aftenposten noted how that makes FIFA resemble Trump\u2019s own administration: \u201cIt\u2019s completely in violation of the reforms that were supposed to make the football organization more democratic after a major corruption scandal in 2015.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now Klaveness is in Vancouver at a new FIFA congress, and told Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) that she hadn\u2019t received much reaction to her own new attempts to enforce fair play. \u201cWe arrived late last night, so haven\u2019t heard much reaction (to NFF\u2019s new challenge),\u201d Klaveness said. \u201cFIFA has known for quite awhile that we evaluated supporting the complaint, they were at our congress themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Norway\u2019s football president is known for questioning authority, and made a brave and memorable debut at the FIFA Congress in Qatar in 2022, speaking out against corruption and human rights abuses. PHOTO: FIFA video grab<\/p>\n

Klaveness also told NRK that NFF \u201chas had dialogue with FIFA at the administrative level about this, and how we intend to handle it.\u201d She said some FIFA countries had also commented that \u201cothers should have received the peace prize,\u201d while still others spoke of a \u201cdon\u2019t mention the war\u201d mentality.<\/p>\n

She was undisturbed by reported comments from a White House spokesman that \u201cno one deserves FIFA\u2019s first peace prize more that President Trump,\u201d and suggested anyone thinking otherwise must suffer from \u201cTrump Derangement Syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klaveness claims that NFF\u2019s objections to the prize and how it was created and handled \u201chas nothing to do with Trump of the White House.\u201d Rather, she claimed, \u201cwe believe as a matter of principle that \u00a0it\u2019s a prize that is outside FIFA\u2019s mandate and not anchored\u201d in FIFA\u2019s own organization.\u201d She maintains that regardless of who was given the prize, it defies the arm\u2019s-length distance FIFA should maintain with national leaders.<\/p>\n

She suspects there are efforts to retain \u201cFIFA\u2019s peace prize\u201d in the years to come, but that more objective criteria must be established and the process of choosing a winner must be better. She\u2019s not backing down and admits that Norway\u2019s efforts to abide by FIFA\u2019s own rules and regulations \u201ccome with a price. It\u2019s not easy for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Klaveness insists, however, that it\u2019s important to \u201cpush back\u201d and state Norway\u2019s position: \u201cWe stand amidst change now, and we must be there to influence it.\u201d She has already stated that NFF is requesting that FIFA\u2019s ethics committee address FairSquare\u2019s complaint.<\/p>\n

She has plenty of support at home, in a country that currently claims some of the world\u2019s best football players who will be competing in the World Cup. She\u2019s also gone public, along with NFF\u2019s secretary general Karl-Petter L\u00f8ken, about the serious concerns over costs tied to the upcoming World Cup and how expensive it will be for all involved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important for Norwegian football to stand up for its own values also when it\u2019s uncomfortable,\u201d Aftenposten editorialized on Wednesday. \u201cThe sad thing is that it would all have been hushed up in the football world if Lise Klaveness hadn\u2019t spoken up.\u201d<\/p>\n

NewsinEnglish.no\/Nina Berglund<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anyone who knows Lise Klaveness can attest to how she\u2019s firm on principle and her devotion to football.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-639215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=639215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}