This is an historic achievement- don’t dismiss it
For a country like Palestine with its horrible FA, declining standard in the league, and general disinterest in grassroots football development to qualify for three straight AFC Asian Cups is absolutely incredible.
It’s an achievement that the players, coaches, and fans should take time to revel in. For the uninitiated and younger people in the audience- Palestine has come a long way. There was a time 20 years ago where the team could not count on local players to make it through 90 minutes because league football was suspended.
There was a time when Jibril Rajoub was so dismissive of the national team that players showed up to Jamal Mahmoud’s training in their own kits- showing off their sporting loyalties for various European clubs.
It took every last drip of sweat from the generation born in the early-to-mid late 1980s to get here. That was the generation that suffered through ignominy where it wasn’t so evident that the passage of time would deliver progress. Saeb Jendeya, Pablo Abdala, Edgardo Abdala, Ziyad Al-Kord and others got Palestine to a certain level of respectability on the continent, but in the immediate years following their retirement, Palestinian football was a disaster.
There was a time when Palestine went TWENTY TWO matches without tasting victory, a timespan that lasted nearly five years, featured 14 losses, and a paltry 9 goals.
That wretched span between 2006 and 2011 saw Palestine get eliminated from the 2011 AFC Asian Cup because they failed to qualify for the 2010 Challenge Cup following two draws against Nepal and Kyrgyzstan.
On this day when we celebrate a brilliant new generation of players and a trip to the continent’s showpiece, let’s remember the journey we came on.
Ramzi Saleh playing without an ACL, Haitham Dheeb secretly leaving his job as a teacher to play for the national team, Imad Zatara, Abdelatif Bahdari and Omar Jarun fighting with their clubs to be present for national team games. A brilliant run of form by Ashraf Nu’man to score the goals this team desperately needed because there was no reliable striker.
It took a manager with not only the ability to stand up to his own superiors at the PFA, compartmentalize the dysfunction, and then lead a rag tag group of players into battle. Qualifying for the 2015 AFC Asian Cup by beating the Philippines was a miracle. It was a miracle that helped improve the team slowly and steadily.
If things had gone differently on May 30th, 2014 we would not be living the reality we live now. It’s quite maddening how fans seem to think that Palestine beating Yemen 5-0 and Philippines 4-0 is normal and that a 1-0 win away to Mongolia on an awful pitch is a massive failure.
Big Teams miss out
I have heard a lot of criticism about the level of opponents Palestine played to get here. Yes, Palestine was the top ranked side and they would have been the betting favorites to top the group. All football matches start at 0-0 and anything can happen especially when playing away from home on a horrendous pitch.
Kuwait, who has infinitely more financial and sporting resources than Palestine, and up until last year had never lost to Al-Fida’i missed out on the continental showpiece after losing to Indonesia at home.
Turkmenistan, who have, just like Palestine qualified for two Asian Cups (2004, 2019), are also out having succumbed to the host of their group- Malaysia.
Dabboub has earned his position
Former national team manager Ahmed El-Hassan took to Facebook to express the steps the FA needed to take to prepare for the Asian Cup. It seemed as if the manager had been tricked into performing an unknown act of self satire. It was even more ridiculous when he said the FA needed to take a “quick decision whether to retain or dismiss the national team coaching staff.”
Seriously?
There seems to be a section of fans who want to keep talking about Abdel Nasser Barakat’s sacking. It’s been 4.5 years since we received that news. It was a horrible decision that led to an even worse decision to fire Julio Cesar Baldivieso for Noureddine Ould Ali. We watched 33 games of bunker ball- stooped to the levels of opponents far below us- what we knew this team could do at the Asian Cup and on the road to Qatar 2022 never manifested because of a manager that was out of his depth.
Thankfully that nightmare came to an end. The FA offered the job to Abdel Nasser Barakat and he wanted certain guarantees which were not forthcoming. Yes it was not fair, but neither are most of the shenanigans that Jibril Rajoub gets up to, like going to war with Abdallah Jaber, which most “supporters” seem awfully quiet about.
I was skeptical when Makram Dabboub- the assistant’s assistant, the former goalkeeping coach, got the job. I said he should be nothing more than a temporary hire and then he went out and beat Singapore 4-0, Yemen 3-0, and Comoros 5-1. That left me ruing the fact that we didn’t sack Ould Ali earlier.
As far as the much maligned Makram Dabboub is concerned. He has a 64% winning percentage in his 11 matches in charge. That is the highest ever managerial winning percentage in national team history.
His losses have come with severely depleted squads. The man deserves credit for bringing this team back from the brink after it hit rock bottom in their worst ever competitive loss (0-5 vs. Saudi Arabia in March 2021).
For reference, here are the records of his predecessors following 11 matches:
Noureddine Ould Ali collected four wins in meaningless friendlies (v. Tajikistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan) Mahmoud and Barakat did good work in the 2012 Challenge Cup (wins v Bahrain, Sudan, Nepal, and Maldives) and 2018 World Cup qualifiers (wins vs. Malaysia, Timor Leste) respectively. The numbers don’t lie though- Makram Dabboub has out performed all of them in competitive matches. Yes, he hasn’t faced a team ranked above Palestine in a competitive match- but you can only play the opponents in front of you.
I am not sure what the fans want from the Tunisian tactician. He has delivered when he had his strongest squad available to him. His losses have come in situations where he was desperately shorthanded. Al-Fida’i won five straight competitive fixtures only once before (between 2016 and 2017) but that was done with the benefit of playing four matches in Palestine.
Tactically, he is as astute a manager as Palestine has ever had and knows how to pick on the weaknesses of opponents. He has won all five of his World Cup and Asian Cup qualifiers- scoring 17 and conceding none. This was all done away from Palestine’s home ground- in the heat of Saudi Arabia and on perhaps the worst pitch to ever host an international football game in Mongolia.
Do I agree with every decision he makes? No. I didn’t agree with Jamal Mahmoud or Abdel Nasser Barakat all the time, either.
Yes, he will have to own up to the fact that he called up Khaled Salem to the Arab Cup. We all got burned for that; but look at how Palestine did tactically in fits and spurts during the Arab Cup. The game against Morocco was being managed well until Amr Kaddoura made that unfortunate error. Palestine took a lead against Saudi Arabia- spurned chances to widen their advantage and had to settle for a 1-1 draw. In the final game, individual errors put Palestine down 2-0- not tactical ones. Tactically, Palestine were far better- but once again couldn’t finish- and when Jordan’s flukey third goal went in the team mentally collapsed.
Makram Dabboub deserves a chance. His tactics are sound and he knows roughly who his top 15 players are. He should be afforded time and resources to test and tinker in friendlies ahead of the Asian Cup.
We are lucky to have someone as adept as him leading our national team because the PFA isn’t going to pay to get a big name coach in. Even if it did- do you trust these people to not hire a fraud like Dick Advocaat, Bernd Stange, or Vital Borklemans? Do you want to waste a fortune on a foreign coach who doesn’t care to study his own players and just sets them up in a low block? That is the alternative. Especially with this FA- they’re not going to see the light and hire some visionary.
Dabboub has this team playing an attractive style of football with the fullbacks overlapping and causing positional overloads. The three forwards are wreaking havoc in tandem and even the midfield players are popping up with goals. He has his message so well communicated that a superstar like Oday Dabbagh runs back to help in defence.
The Palestine Football Association has lucked into a couple of coaches in its history. Azmi Nassar, Alfred Riedl, Jamal Mahmoud, Abdel Nasser Barakat, and now Makram Dabboub.
I am looking forward to seeing what the Tunisian can do next year at the 2023 Asian Cup Finals. Until then, I thank Makram Dabboub from the bottom of my heart for bringing this team back from the abyss and guaranteeing us a place at the Asian Cup.
