FIFA can't solve geopolitical problems: Gianni Infantino

Geneva: Facing growing global calls to suspend Israeli teams from football, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Thursday the governing body must promote peace and unity and could not solve political issues.

In a febrile period for football politics, Infantino led a meeting of FIFA’s ruling council in Zurich which did not have Israel formally on the agenda before 2026 World Cup qualifying games resume next week.

He later met privately at FIFA headquarters with the leader of the Palestinian football federation, Jibril Rajoub, and praised his organization “for their resilience at this time.”

The strongest push against Israeli teams by European football leaders during the two-year conflict in Gaza was paused after a peace proposal on Monday in the White House by US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Infantino stressed to his 37-member council “the importance of promoting peace and unity, particularly in the context of the ongoing situation in Gaza,” FIFA said in a news release that did not refer directly to Israel.

“FIFA cannot solve geopolitical problems,” Infantino said in the statement, “but it can and must promote football around the world by harnessing its unifying, educational, cultural and humanitarian values.”

The Israel men’s team should now travel to play World Cup qualifiers against Norway in Oslo on Oct. 11 and Italy in Udine three days later.

Norway was among European football federations urging UEFA to call a vote of its executive committee ahead of the FIFA meeting in Zurich on suspending Israeli teams from international competitions. Turkey’s football body directly called on UEFA and FIFA to suspend Israel.

Any vote of the 20-member UEFA panel seemed likely to pass, people familiar with the discussions told The Associated Press, despite opposition from some members including Israel and Germany.

FIFA and Infantino — who has built close ties to Trump ahead of the US cohosting the World Cup next year with Canada and Mexico — were never likely to follow any UEFA vote. That prospect became even more distant last week when the US State Department said it would work to protect Israel’s status in football.

The Trump-Netanyahu peace proposal on Monday also was quickly welcomed by governments in the Middle East including Qatar, a key supporter of the Palestinian people. Qatar’s prime minister received an apology from Netanyahu, by telephone, for a Sept. 9 military strike on Doha that targeted Hamas officials.

Qatar also has close commercial and sports political ties to UEFA, whose President Aleksander Ceferin attended the FIFA meeting Thursday. Also there was Nasser al-Khelaifi, the influential head of the 700-member European Club Association network of teams and president of Paris Saint-Germain, the Qatar-owned Champions League titleholder. Al-Khelaifi also is a member of Qatar’s government.

Before going to FIFA, Rajoub had been in Switzerland and met Wednesday with Inter national Olympic Committee president Kirsty Coventry in Lausanne. A post on Infantino’s Instagram account said he and Rajoub met to “discuss the ongoing situation in the Middle East region.”

There was no mention of progress at FIFA in two investigations it set up last year. FIFA requested a disciplinary investigation into possible discrimination by the Israeli football federation and a separate governance panel is looking into “the participation in Israeli competitions of Israeli football teams allegedly based in the territory of Palestine.”