'I don't have the words' - Palestine experience historic night in Bilbao

More than 50,000 fans cheered on Ihab Abu Jazar's team with the coach and players 'shocked' by the outpouring of support during time in northern Spain

- Sid Lowe

“We are more than a national team, we represent a story of pain but also hope,” Ihab Abu Jazar said, “and we are not alone.” At 8.26pm on Saturday the Palestine coach, whose father was killed in the Israel-Gaza war and whose siblings now live in tents in Khan Younis, emerged from the tunnel and took his place by the bench at San Mamés, Bilbao.

Dressed in black, a keffiyeh over his shoulders, he watched 11 men in red, “a team of refugees playing for Palestinians all over the world”, and listened to 51,396 people applaud them, chanting for their freedom.

“We don’t play just to win; we play to exist,” he had said in the days before Palestine played their first game in Europe, an occasion that turned out to be bigger than even he had imagined: “The most important day in my life”, a “historic” night that “all the words in the world can’t explain”. They didn’t win - they were a goal down within four minutes and lost 3-0 against the Basque national team - but they competed, and it wasn’t about that. In fact, when Zaid Qunbar looked like he might equalise after 12 minutes the whole of this vast stadium cheered him on, roaring the opposition striker running towards their goal.

They had cheered all of them, all night. “We have felt like we were at home; not a second home, our home: it touched us from the start,” Abu Jazar said. At the end they stood before the north stand at San Mamés, where flares burnt and Ikurriñas and Palestinian flags flew, many from the same masts: 50 footballers, arms around each other’s shoulders, and 50,000 fans singing together at the place so revered they call it the Cathedral. Euskal Selekzioa, the Basque team unrecognised by Fifa and playing just their fifth game in a decade; and a Palestine side that was not recognised by Fifa until 1998 and hasn’t played at home since 2019.