The FIFA called on Thursday for peace in Loopbut its president, Gianni Infantinoindicated that this organization “cannot solve geopolitical problems,” and refrained from responding to requests to suspend the Israeli federation.
Mentioning “the current situation in Gaza” at the opening of the institution’s closed-door meeting, the Italian-Swiss leader demonstrated that “the power of football” is to “bring people together in a divided world,” offering “a message of peace and unity,” according to a statement from the organization.
“FIFA cannot solve geopolitical problems, but it can and must promote football throughout the world by exploiting its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values,” the leader insisted.
The FIFA statement does not mention either Israel or its federation, when there are more and more requests to exclude the team from international competitions, in the middle of the 2026 World Cup qualification campaign.
Three independent UN experts last week asked both FIFA and UEFA to suspend Israel, valuing the “genocide” in Gaza and valuing that “sports institutions should not close their eyes to the serious violations of Human Rights.”
Last Friday, the patron of the Norwegian federation Lise Klaveness, whose men’s team will host Israel on October 11, explained that she was working “so that Israel is sanctioned.”
“Personally I think that if Russia is excluded, Israel should be excluded too,” he explained in a Norwegian podcast.
A few days after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, UEFA and FIFA jointly excluded the Russian national team and clubs from international competitions, a sanction still in force.
