Palestine still dreaming at FIFA Arab Cup

Doha, Qatar: Rami Hamada knew that the odds were stacked against Palestine. Sitting well outside the top ten nations heading to the FIFA Arab Cup on t...

Doha, Qatar: Rami Hamada knew that the odds were stacked against Palestine. Sitting well outside the top ten nations heading to the FIFA Arab Cup on the FIFA World Ranking, the Lions of Canaan were forced to navigate the qualification phase just to join the main table.

There they were pushed all the way to penalties by Libya in a match that Hamada, the team’s goalkeeper and occasional captain, starred in. Off the back of a pre-tournament camp in Spain where the team’s belief began to take root, the dramatic nature of the play-off victory saw it blossom.

Having grabbed a 95th minute winner against hosts Qatar first up in the group stage and then rallying from two goals down to draw 2-2 with 2021 runners-up Tunisia, the belief was exploding.

A scoreless draw against Syria in the section settler means that the Lions of Canaan finished, remarkably, as group winners and are through to the quarter-finals for the first time in their history. As Hamada told FIFA post-match, there is now no limit to the extent of their dreams at the regional showpiece. “First of all this is like a dream, until now we have been living the dream and we need that dream to continue.

“I didn’t want to wait for anyone to give us a chance so we had to show everything on the field. Before we didn’t talk, we were like a small team but now we have showed with our actions that we are a big team.”