FIFA President Gianni Infantino said on Monday that he is against boycotts and, as such, is against a ban on Israel.
Speaking in an interview with Sky News, Infantino called the idea of boycotting Israel a “defeat."
He added that he believes that the organization, which is the global governing body of soccer, should look into changing its rules and "enshrine in our statutes that we should actually never ban any country from playing [soccer] because of the acts of their political leaders."
The comments came as FIFA faces growing pressure to ban Israel.
FIFA has dealt with requests to ban Israel in recent years, most notably from the Palestinian Authority, from Iran and, most recently, also from Turkey.
In 2024, FIFA delayed for a second time its decision on a Palestinian Authority bid to have Israel suspended from international soccer.
In the Sky News interview, Infantino was also asked about the criticism of his decision to award FIFA’s new peace prize to US President Donald Trump.
Noting that FIFA's slogan that soccer unites the world "goes hand in hand with peace", Infatino added, "So, whatever we can do to help peace in the world, we should be doing it, and for this reason, for some time we were thinking about [whether] we should do something to reward people who do something."
Infantino insisted that "objectively, [Trump] deserves it".
He praised the US President Trump for getting people on opposite sides of conflict into the same room.