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Twelve months ago, supporters of the Palestine national team were calling out for several eligible players to switch their allegiance. Now that Wessam Abou Ali, Omar Faraj, and Moustafa Zeidan have all debuted, the focus of fans have shifted elsewhere.
For whatever reason, the fans see Palestine-eligible players as an elixir capable of solving all the national team ills. Al-Fida’i has a surplus of forwards with the aforementioned Abou Ali and Faraj along with the likes of the team’s all-time top goal scorer Oday Dabbagh and Shehab Qunbar. There are veteran options as well and a handful of players who represented the country at youth level that could be in line for a debut.
Does any of this matter? No.
The rapacious calls on social media are for Youssef Salech to be pursued, his allegiance to be switched from Denmark to Palestine, and for him to be called up immediately.
Salech is a good player and his accomplishments with Sirius in the Allsvenskan merit a national team call up but no one has asked how he fits into the current puzzle with Dabbagh and Abou Ali nailed on starters.
None of that matters. Most of the legions of Palestine fans have barely seen Salech play. In fact, his name has been incorrectly transliterated a thousand times with fans calling him Saleesh instead of Saleh.
The other player fans lust after is Adam Daghim who recently joined RB Salzburg’s first team. While the player is immensely talented there is no guarantee that he would:
1. Want to play for Palestine when a senior call up to Denmark is still a very real possibility.
2. Would start for Palestine ahead of Tamer Seyam who has contributed 13 goals and a whopping 15 assists in ten years of service to the country.
An outsized portion of the fans’ energy is dedicated to players that could theoretically play for Palestine instead of the ones that actually do.
Chances are these players were already approached by the national team staff and did not give a firm answer either way.
That does not stop the hordes on social media from trying to force an answer out of them either way. The national team did approach Hassan Hilu and while the player gave it some thought he ultimately did not accept the call. The reasoning is not one hundred percent clear because the player himself did not speak publicly about the issue.
Reading between the lines it could very well be that he cannot handle the pressure Israeli society would dump on him and his family.
Not every player is as mentally strong as Ataa Jaber. Remember him?
He was the object of desire in early 2023 but that quickly faded once he started playing for the national team.
Spare a thought for those players who have played for Palestine for years as they are prime targets for the misplaced ire of the fans.
Jonathan Cantillana might have been a weird call up in 2024 but by all accounts he did his job- and did it well- against South Korea. This is a man who has found the net ten times for Palestine and is not a scrub by any means.
Mohammed Darweesh is a squad player providing experience and guidance for the younger generation. He is the ninth most capped player in national team history. For those that know a national team is about building the best group and not selecting the best 26 players his presence makes sense.
Not to those espousing their views on Facebook and Instagram, though.
Curiously enough we do not see these same people call for the inclusion of players from the Olympic team. I have seen countless posts about Youssef Salech and Adam Daghim but have yet to see anyone lobby for Hamed Hamdan (Petrojet) or Khaled Al-Nabris (Ismaily) who play in the Egyptian top flight.
There was similarly no outcry for veterans like Yashir Islame (7 goals in 19 games) or Layth Kharoub (5 goals in 11 games).
The Case of Alaa Aldeen Hassan
There is however clamoring Alaa Aldeen Hassan who has been deemed better than everyone in the team simply because he shares a dressing room with the likes of Marco Verrati, Yousef Msakni, and Omar Al-Somah.
There is no consideration as to why the player has been left out of every squad since March of this year. When people who stoke the fire online are presented with the facts they simply ignore them.
Football Palestine spoke to more than one player who was a part of the March squad that beat Bangladesh in Kuwait and Dhaka and the decision to drop Hassan was one they agreed with.
“He killed us bro. He came into the game as a sub and followed none of the instructions. We needed to move the ball quickly and he was trying to dribble and shoot from everywhere.”
A veteran of the squad chimed in with his thoughts as well “He acts like he is this big star because he is playing in Qatar but he hasn’t done anything with the national team…. Look at the other players- Oday Dabbagh could have the biggest ego in the world given what he has done but he is the exact opposite.”
In his last appearance with the national team Hassan was subbed off after coming into the deadlocked encounter with the match still scoreless. Upon approaching the bench he launched into a profanity-laced tirade towards Makram Daboub.
The Tunisian tactician remained calm and uttered hala bitshoof [now you’ll see]. Within seconds the man brought on in Hassan’s place- Samer Zubaida- did what was asked of him. He drove the ball forward, quickly passed to Musab Al-Battat, and continued running to create space for his captain.
That cross ended up at the feet of Michel Termanini who slotted home the winner for ten-man Palestine.
Conclusion
Everyone wants to see the best players declare for Palestine. That said, the group Palestine has right now is historically good. Outside of the core group of players there are several who have the ability to play for the national team as well.
The one factor that many supporters seem to not account for is attitude and will. There are many talented national teams that do not live up to their talent simply because they lack the X-factor. Serbia and Norway are good examples of this.
Palestine does not need a rebuild; it needs one or two players in specific defensive positions. Any recruit has to come in with humility and a readiness to sacrifice his ego for the greater good. That has been Palestine’s secret to success and if things go right over the next eight months it could be what gets them to the World Cup finals.
