Izzat Hamzeh couldn’t help the smile on his face on Tuesday as he watched his soccer team practice. After all, the Palestine national team coach had actually managed to get a squad together.
While the biggest concern for most national team coaches often involves injuries to star players, the problems facing Hamzeh is usually of a more basic nature — getting all his players out of the Gaza Strip and West Bank for away matches.
This time, he achieved the feat of getting his team together with 24 hours to spare, ahead of their friendly against local team FC Brussels.
PHOTO: AFP
“This is one of our major victories, that under all these circumstances we still manage to operate,” he said.
The match on the theme “A Goal for Peace” is organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) and marks that organization’s 60th anniversary.
But instead of a normal squad of 22, Hamzeh had to be content with 16. And seven of those from the Gaza Strip needed three days to get to Belgium, held up by Israeli checkpoints and administrative burdens to get travel permits, he said.
It leaves him precious little time for tactical preparations.
But, he said, he doesn’t need to spend any time on motivational speeches.
“Imagine somebody who came here and spent three days on checkpoints,” he said. “He doesn’t need motivation. He is already motivated.”
The players were not available for interviews on Tuesday.
Football is still played in half of the Palestinian territories, with the West Bank maintaining a league, while players in Gaza, at the other side of Israel, have been grounded. There are heavy travel restrictions between the two parts.
During the three-week Israeli offensive against rocket squads in mid-January, more than 1,400 Palestinians were killed, a Palestinian human rights group’s figures showed. Hamzeh remembers making phone calls to find out if some players were hurt, or worse. Two former players on the Palestinian national team were killed, he said.
And when it comes to away matches, things don’t always work out as well as this week.
The Palestinians missed a World Cup qualifying game in Singapore in late 2007 because of Israeli travel restrictions. They were eliminated in the first round of qualifying.
Such setbacks have taken their toll.
Palestine reached their highest FIFA ranking of 115th in 2006, when they made the penultimate qualifying round for the Asian Cup, but have now fallen to 171st. Draws against Nepal and Kyrgyzstan didn’t help, and Hamzeh has been increasingly criticized at home.
For the Brussels friendly, Hamzeh said he was without four of his best players, as professional clubs in other nations are not obligated to release players for such games.
Still, playing a match in Europe again has the freshness of a new beginning.
Hamzeh himself was born in a refugee camp outside Jericho in 1957 and moved to another in Jordan during his youth. He soon discovered the joys of soccer.
“It was our life because there was nothing to do after school, except playing on sandy pitches,” he said. “We collected money to buy a small ball and this ball bound us as a neighborhood.”
There is a similar bond now, which means Hamzeh doesn’t have to worry about any political infighting between players of the West Bank’s Fatah and Gaza’s Hamas.
“On the level of players: No Fatah, no Hamas, no political issue,” Hamzeh said. “They are one team. Nobody talks about it.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
Rafael Nadal on Wednesday said the upcoming French Open would be the moment to “give everything and die” on the court after his comeback from injury in Barcelona was curtailed by Alex de Minaur. The 22-time Grand Slam title winner, back playing this week after three months on the sidelines, battled well, but eventually crumbled 7-5, 6-1 against the world No. 11 from Australia in the second round. Nadal, 37, who missed virtually all of last season, is hoping to compete at the French Open next month where he is the record 14-time champion. The Spaniard said the clash with De Minaur was
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but