A Tribute to Suleiman al-Obeid
I remember once, years ago, I’d started a job in an oil company — the kind making money from scientific stuff to create metals that could drill deeper into the North Sea. I hadn’t worked in an office for ages, so I was already feeling out of my depth. One day, it wasn’t just anybody — it was SuperDan (NOHOMO), the hero of the office, the guy everyone deferred to — talking about a football game he’d played in. He said he’d taken a penalty and missed the goal completely. I said, you missed? That’s the cardinal sin. At least make the keeper work for it.
At this point, I was over 40, had been smoking most of my life, I think I’d just quit, but I was still putting away over 100 units of booze a week. Despite all that, I still thought I was the best footballer in the world — just like I’d been when I was 18.
Next thing, SuperDan says, “I didn’t think you were that good — let’s have a shootout.” I’m game. But before we even got to the penalties, a cross comes in. And in my head, I’m still that 18-year-old. I launch into a scissors kick like I’m on Match of the Day.
Only reality didn’t match the dream. I hit the ground flat on my arse. I missed the ball completely. The whole office was laughing, and so was I — because deep down I knew how rare it is to get it right. That kick is like catching lightning in a bottle. You could try a thousand times and never connect.
Now imagine pulling it off on a battered pitch in Gaza, under siege, with your country’s borders locked and your life under constant threat. That’s what Suleiman al-Obeid did in Amman on 27 September 2010 — Palestine 1–3 Yemen, his goal on 79′. For tournament context, see the 2010 WAFF Championship.
Watch the goal:
Watch it again. The technique, the timing, the impossibility of it. If that scissor kick was profitable for FIFA or UEFA, it’d be everywhere — on billboards, in Nike ads, played on loop before every Champions League game. But it’s tied to Palestine, to siege, to genocide. Those truths aren’t marketable; they’re a PR liability. So instead of celebrating it, they bury it.
In 2010, Suleiman scored that goal. He’d already lived through the 2006 war, grown up in a place where every game, every training session, every bus ride to a stadium carried risk. Yet he dedicated himself to football — to creating something beautiful in the middle of destruction.
That’s something worth learning from: to find the thing you love and pursue it despite the walls closing in. They called him the Palestinian Pelé, and for good reason — over a hundred goals in his career, under occupation. Pelé scored a thousand goals — but maybe ten if American-made bombs were falling around him. I scored 13 goals in one season when I was 19 and fit, with proper pitches, no bombs, no checkpoints. Suleiman did it where even getting to the match could kill you.
Can you imagine if the British invaded the Falklands and killed Messi? If Spain invaded Portugal and killed Ronaldo while he was reaching for aid? The outrage would be deafening. But when Israel killed Suleiman, FIFA and UEFA’s reaction was sterile, timid, wrapped in PR language. How scared are you of standing on the side of humanity?
Russia was banned almost immediately from competing on the international stage by Fifa and UEFA after their invasion of Ukraine, Why has Israel not been banned after everythjing they’ve done in the last 2 years? Is it simply racism? Or are UEFA officials on the Epstein flight logs, too?
For the record: UEFA’s tribute post is here — “Farewell to Suleiman al-Obeid…” — and Mohamed Salah’s response finally got the press talking about it: “Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?”
Suleiman al-Obeid faced every obstacle. They had every advantage. Yet he was the genius.
History’s full of people like him — brilliant, principled, but inconvenient to the powers that be. Think of Paul Robeson, Naji al-Ali, Mahmoud Darwish, Tommy Smith and John Carlos — punished or erased because their truth was bad for business.
Suleiman belongs in that company. Not just for the scissor kick, but for living a footballer’s life under siege, for scoring over a hundred goals when even reaching the pitch was an act of defiance.
They can erase him from the record books, but they can’t erase him from the truth. And the truth is simple:
Suleiman al-Obeid was an inspiration.