On 3 July 2011, the Palestinian football team played Afghanistan in the Faisal Al-Husseini International Stadium in the West Bank. It was their first ever World Cup qualification match on home soil and was watched by a “raucous 10,000-strong crowd,” as the writer James Montague, who was present, notes in his book Thirty One Nil—On the Road with Football’s Outsiders. The match was both about pride and about politics: as Jibril Rajoub, the head of the Palestinian Football Association, told Montague, “I think having a home pitch recognised by FIFA is proof that statehood is possible.” In this extract, Montague relives the match, and the fleeting World Cup aspirations of the Palestinian team, and other teams from strife-torn nations.
Al Ram, Ramallah, West Bank
The Faisal al-Husseini Stadium is small, but it is home. Busloads of fans from all across the West Bank arrive two hours before kick-off, driving past the West Bank separation barrier that runs a hundred metres from the stadium’s entrance. Banks of riot police clad in body armour and helmets, some carrying machine guns, prepare for the biggest match in Palestine’s history. Its significance goes far beyond the football pitch. For the past two years the Palestinian Authority has been busy building the basics for an independent state: a strong economy, an honest, incorruptible civil service, a security force that can match any internal strife it may face, especially a football match. But part of this strategy involves sport, and especially football.
The man in charge of the Palestinian Football Association is Jibril Rajoub, one of the most powerful men in the West Bank. As a young radical he spent seventeen years in an Israeli prison for throwing a grenade at an army checkpoint. While in prison he learned to speak fluent Hebrew and, after his release, later rejected violence as a means of achieving Palestinian statehood. He rose to become Yasser Arafat’s feared West Bank national security adviser and was one of the highest ranking members of Fatah. For him, the national football team is another way of showing the world that the Palestinians can take care of their own business. “In 2006 we had no football, no competitions, nothing; now there has been a revolution in Palestine. This has a political dimension and I think having a home pitch recognised by FIFA is proof that statehood is possible. I do believe that sport can help this,” he tells me that morning, in the café of Ramallah’s sole five-star hotel. He is an imposing presence, with a wide back, barrel chest, bald head and a moustache. He speaks in a low, gravelly voice. He is now a man of peace, he says, but he is not someone you would want to get on the wrong side of. “I think this match is a clear-cut message to the international community that Palestine is capable, putting it on the map of sport for the first time,” he says. “We will have our first ever World Cup qualification on Palestinian territory, under Palestinian Authority protection by Palestinian police. The whole participation will be ours, blood and flesh. It is history.”
Rajoub’s portrait hangs high in the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium, next to pictures of Yasser Arafat with the golden Dome of the Rock—Jerusalem’s iconic shrine built on the site of Judaism’s Second Temple that is considered the third holiest site in Islam—in the background. Next to them are pictures of the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas and Sepp Blatter, whose decision to allow Palestine to join FIFA will arguably be the greatest legacy of his career. Fans stream into the stands, paying their five shekels for a ticket. Hundreds of members of the press from all around the world are here, too, to watch history being made. In the Palestinian dressing room the pressure returns. The players are silent. Ahmed Keshkesh is nowhere to be seen. On discovering he was to start on the bench, he stormed out of the team’s hotel and hasn’t been seen since. The players sit with their backs to the wall while the team’s three goalkeepers lay their training bibs on the floor and pray together. Coach Moussa again quietly paces around the room, now in shirt, tie and jacket. Finally it is game time. The team, the squad and the coaches meet Moussa in the middle of the room. They link arms in a big circle and begin to pray. This time, unlike before the first leg, the team kiss each other before going out into the tunnel. Moussa greets each and wishes them luck in their own language. He gets to Roberto Bishara. They hold each other, unable to communicate in a common language. They nod, acknowledging the awkwardness, and go in their separate directions.
The two teams line up in the tunnel. Omar stands in the middle, a full head above his team-mates, exhorting them in American English to ‘talk to each other’, although nobody does. The twenty-two men walk out into the baking sunlight to a scrum of photographers and TV cameras. More than fifty journalists are here from Israel alone. The match is even being shown live on Israel’s Channel 5. In the stands Jibril Rajoub is watching, as is the prime minister Salam Fayyad, as they line up for the national anthems, both of which sound as if they have been written in seventeenth-century France. There are no tears of emotion.
The raucous 10,000-strong crowd roar on the Palestinians. It is a scrappy game at first, as if the weight of expectation is affecting the team’s performance. But the Afghans seem sapped of all energy. Inevitably Palestine take the lead when Hussam Wadi shoots from forty yards out and somehow finds the back of the net. The Afghan goalkeeper curses himself, but it doesn’t lead to an avalanche largely thanks to luck. The Palestinians hit the post three times and when Afghanistan equalise there’s brief hope of an upset. But everyone is drained. The heat, the travel, the pressure, the dignitaries, all of it means that, by the end, the teams can barely kick the ball. It takes a few moments for the players and the crowd to realise that the referee has blown the final whistle. Two Afghan players collapse and are taken to hospital with exhaustion. There is barely any celebration as the Palestinians return to the tunnel. Salam Fayyad enters the silent dressing room and softly whispers words of encouragement into each player’s ear, but he senses that the mood doesn’t call for it. The Palestinians stay silent, as if the victors in an attritional war. But victors none the less.
**
Less than a month later, the two-match tie against Thailand has everything the Palestinians have become accustomed to: defeat, fatigue, hope and, ultimately, failure. The first game in Bangkok sees the Thais take a slender 1–0 lead to the West Bank. They are the favourites after all. But the return match is a different proposition and the slim lead makes little difference to the Palestinians. Either way, they need to score a goal. Which is what they do. The Palestinians level the tie early on with a brilliant move started and finished by Murad Alyan, the part-time striker who works as a lab assistant in a West Bank hospital. He initiates a one-two that pings quickly between three players before he himself fires into the bottom right-hand corner from outside the penalty box. The Thais score soon after, securing a crucial away goal, meaning Palestine need to score twice. Fifty-six minutes pass without any more goals. As the game enters its final few minutes the Palestinians pour forward, seemingly to no avail. But then, in the ninetieth minute, Alyan scores his second of the game, finding himself on the ball on the right-hand side of the penalty box. He somehow outmuscles and bamboozles five Thai players around him and fires low and hard across the goalkeeper into the far corner of the net. The Palestinians have four minutes to save their World Cup. They charge deep into injury time, but the Thais break away and when their striker is hacked down from behind by Ahmed Harbi, who receives a red card, the Palestine team are reduced to ten men. Datsakorn Thonglao scores from the free-kick with virtually the last kick of the game. It ends 2-2 and Palestine is eliminated.
It is a sad end for the Palestinians, and for coach Moussa, too. He will later be sacked for his brave but ultimately unsuccessful campaign. Not a single team that began in the first round of Asian qualification makes it to group stage. Nor do some of Asia’s so-called sleeping giants. India, with its population of a billion people, is swept aside by the United Arab Emirates, with its population of nine million. Palestine’s neighbour Jordan destroys Nepal 9-0 in one match. China scores thirteen goals over two games against Laos. Oman are awarded a place in the next round after riots in Myanmar call a halt to their second match. But one unlikely team does make it through to the final round.
Syria handsomely defeat Tajikistan over two games. The Syrian team had also travelled to the Metellurg Stadium in Tursunzode and won 4–0. Civil war is raging in their homeland but they have the best generation of players in their history and have a strong chance of qualifying for Brazil. The Assad regime in Syria prepares to welcome a rare good news story of unity in the face of war with open arms. But it doesn’t happen. Syria are disqualified from World Cup qualification for fielding an ineligible player, George Murad, who once played thirteen minutes in a meaningless friendly for Sweden. Instead, Tajikistan take their place. By the end of July 2011, a full three years before Brazil, the chance of reaching the World Cup finals is over for almost 30 per cent of the world’s population.
An extract from James Montague’s Thirty One Nil—On the Road with Football’s Outsiders. Reproduced with the permission of Bloomsbury India.