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In this ongoing series we profile a Palestine national team player who has not been called up in over two years and explore the reasons for and against his return to the national team.
Like many others on this list- there is the burning question of “what if?”
If Mahmoud Eid’s shot in the 77th minute against Saudi Arabia squeezes under the goalkeeper’s body and into the goal- what would have happened? Palestine surely wins that game instead of drawing. It might have been the catalyst to getting out of the group and it might have yielded more call ups for the Swedish born attacker.
Things had been trending upwards for Eid before that- a 2-0 win over Bangladesh was the result of him providing two assists to Layth Kharoub and Yaser Hamed Mayor.
Eid has been on the scene for a long time. He made his debut in November 2014 against Saudi Arabia and would go on to be an important member of the 2015 AFC Asian Cup squad.
His career trajectory immediately after that skyrocketed. Nine goals and ten assists in only 18 appearances with third division side Nykopping led to a move to the second tier with Atvidabergs. He lasted half the season there because he generated a whopping eight goals and three assists in 16 appearances. Life in the Allsvenskan got off to a perfect start- he scored on his debut and in a supersub role ended 2016 with a pair of goals in ten appearances.
Eid should have been a superstar. Then things got weird.
Season number two at Kalmar ended with a new coach freezing him out of the squad. It meant that Eid spent most of 2018 on loan in Norway and in the Swedish second division. He was the last member dropped by Noureddine Ould Ali for the 2019 AFC Asian Cup.
Makram Daboub assuming the helm helped Eid initially and 2021 was the year he made his second most appearances for the national team (5). His career numbers for Al-Fida’i are as follows:
23 caps (14 starts), 1 G, 2 A
The Case for Mahmoud Eid
The strange thing about Mahmoud Eid’s short lived resurgence in 2021 is that it came at the nadir of his club career. Eid had made the choice to leave Kalmar in 2020- moving to the Indonesian league with Serebaya. His time at the club was cut short by the Coronavirus pandemic and he agreed a short term moves with Mesaimeer in Qatar and then Al-Muharraq in Bahrain.
While he was successful in Qatar’s second division (five goals and three assists in 11 appearances), he hardly played in Bahrain.
That time in his career seems like a long time ago because he has been one of the best foreign players in Thailand since moving to the league in 2022. Half a season with Nongbua led to a move to Bangkok United and he has not looked back since.
This season in particular has been nothing short of remarkable. Eid leads the league in assists and goal involvements. He has played a critical role in a team that is on pace to win the Thai League and has just secured passage to the knockout stage of the Asian Champions League.
There is an argument to be made that Eid is the most in-form player Palestine has. So it is a little perplexing to see him left out of the side.
It makes total sense for Oday Dabbagh and Tamer Seyam to start but what about their backups? Going on what we have seen in Palestine’s last two games those players are the inexperienced Zaid Qunbar and the clubless Islam Batran. Both are fine players but it is hard to argue against Eid who is in the form of his life.
The Case Against Mahmoud Eid
The biggest knock against Eid is that he simply has not put up the numbers you would expect of him with the national team. He was a starter in that 6-0 demolition of Malaysia but it was Sameh Maraaba and Tamer Seyam that feasted that day.
Playing him as a #9 does not really work and in other 2018 World Cup qualifiers his replacements scored after being introduced (Matias Jadue vs. Saudi Arabia and Ahmed Abu Nahyeh vs. Timor Leste). Involvement in the Arab Cup campaign only further enforced the narrative of Eid not being a fit with the national team.
There is also the small matter of a manager deciding- for whatever reason- to pick teams based on chemistry rather than talent. Perhaps Makram Daboub is picking players to backup Seyam and Dabbagh who are content being backups. The best national teams are very rarely a collection of the best 23 players in the country, after all.
Verdict: The national team will always have a core group of players and it is important that those that supplement it bring something to the table. For whatever reason, Eid’s career did not go the direction of his contemporaries- Musab Al-Battat and Tamer Seyam. That does not mean Eid does not have a role to play.
The form of Mahmoud Eid cannot be ignored. He is one of the best players in one of the best leagues (9th according to the coefficient) in Asia. He has unequivocally earned a recall to the national team.
