In December 2025, soon after FIFA awarded U.S. President Donald Trump the inaugural "FIFA Peace Prize," rumors spread that the international soccer governing body was revoking the award.
Readers asked us to confirm whether the award had actually been rescinded. Several Facebook posts making the claim used identical language: "FIFA Orders Donald Trump's Peace Prize Revoked and Returned After Board Members and Top Executives Launch Official Investigation Into Award Process, Claiming Award Was Unilaterally Approved by President Gianni Infantino Without Board Consent."
(Facebook user "Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce fans")
The posts linked to an article on an advertisement-filled website that had the same caption as the headline and read:
The decision follows an internal investigation that reportedly uncovered serious procedural violations in the approval process.
According to senior officials, the award was never reviewed or voted on by FIFA's executive board.
Instead, investigators allege that FIFA President Gianni Infantino unilaterally approved and announced the prize, bypassing established governance protocols and blindsiding multiple top executives.
In a brief statement, FIFA confirmed that the prize had been officially rescinded pending the conclusion of the inquiry.
Sources inside the organization described the atmosphere as "tense" and "deeply fractured," with several board members calling the situation an unprecedented breach of internal policy.
The text in the above posts and article was not a factual recounting of real-life events. While FIFA President Gianni Infantino did give Trump an award on Dec. 5, the organization has not announced it was rescinding the prize. As such, we rate this claim as false.
We previously reached out to FIFA to learn about the process behind creating the award, Trump's selection, whether it was in line with FIFA's code of ethics and whether Infantino's conduct would result in his removal. We have not received a response as of this writing.
GPTZero, a tool for detecting text generated with artificial intelligence, rated the language in the above article as having a 100% likelihood of being AI-generated. (Research shows AI-detection software is imperfect, and readers should consider the tools' results with skepticism.)
Regardless of whether the story was the product of AI, FIFA has made no announcement calling for the return of the award. We looked through FIFA's social media and news releases and found no evidence the organization had rescinded the award.
As we've reported previously, Infantino has not faced censure from FIFA for his actions, although FairSquare, a nonprofit group, filed an official complaint against him with the soccer body, requesting an investigation into the selection process for the peace prize. At the time of this writing, FIFA had not confirmed that such an inquiry was taking place. FIFA's code of ethics states that officials are expected to maintain political neutrality.
The above article appeared to repeat actual Associated Press reporting that other FIFA officials were surprised by the announcement and learned about it through the media. Three anonymous sources also told Politico that Infantino bypassed the FIFA Council to create and award the prize to Trump, with vice presidents who were given advance notice about the award reportedly saying they were told only after the decision was made.
FIFA told ESPN that its ethics committee does not comment on potential ongoing cases and could not confirm receiving the complaint.
Such posts that are likely AI-generated can be characterized as "AI slop," or just "slop" — low-quality content that's easy to create thanks to artificial intelligence tools. For further reading, Snopes wrote a detailed explanation of AI slop.