Gavin Cooney
HOWEVER LIVERPOOL FANS had imagined their new-look team would play in Sunday’s Community Shield, none could have forecast such a meagre contribution from Mohamed Salah.
Salah had fewer touches than any other outfield player in the first half and had a single shot on target across the whole game, before then blazing his penalty over the bar as Liverpool fell to a shootout defeat to Crystal Palace.
He should be forgiven for an uncharacteristically quiet day, though, as nothing he could have done at Wembley would have matched his off-field statement from the day before.
On Friday evening, Uefa posted a curiously vague tribute to the former Palestinian international footballer, Suleiman al-Obeid.
“Farewell to Suleiman al-Obeid, the ‘Palestinian Pelé’”, read Uefa’s post on their social media channels. “A talent who gave hope to countless children, even in the darkest of times.”
Read that post without knowing the context and you’d be forgiving for wondering what exactly had happened to Suleiman al-Obeid. Had he just retired from football? Maybe he had just left a job at Uefa?
Salah accentuated Uefa’s lack of clarity, quoting their post and adding, “Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?”
Can you tell us how he died, where, and why? https://t.co/W7HCyVVtBE
— Mohamed Salah (@MoSalah) August 9, 2025
Uefa have not yet provided said detail.
Here is the truth Uefa did not speak: according to the Palestinian Football Association, Suleiman al-Obeid was killed when Israeli forces attacked civilians in Southern Gaza waiting for humanitarian aid.
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Uefa did at least speak the name of Suleiman al-Obeid. Fifa have yet to say anything about his death. Since al-Obeid’s death became public knowledge on Thursday, the tireless social media user Gianni Infantino has posted highlight reels of Jude Bellingham and Ilkay Gundogan; a thank you to Fifa for facilitating the playing of the game among children worldwide given “football is joy”; footage of himself at the 2024 Olympic Games; amplified Fifa’s opening of volunteer applications for the 2026 World Cup and sent birthday wishes to his good friends, Javier Zanetti, Ivan Cordoba, and Max Allegri.
He and Fifa have said nothing about the death of Suleiman al-Obeid. The Fifa president appears to believe his murder is of less general interest to his 3.3 million followers than the fact Max Allegri has just turned 58.
And so Salah has performed a great service in drawing attention to the silence and obfuscation of football’s governing bodies on what is happening in Gaza.
One of football’s great strengths is the ability to provide support and empathy at times of tragedy; even at a global level, the game will corral around those who have lost and suffered the most. Salah has seen this most recently with the many moving tributes paid to Diogo Jota and Andre Silva.
While this is an uncomfortable comparison to make – Jota and Andre Silva deserve more than to be made part of someone else’s argument – it is nonetheless an obvious fact: football’s governing bodies have not granted the murdered footballers in Palestine the same dignity and respect they have rightly given to Diogo Jota and Andre Silva.
On 23 July, prior to the death of Suleiman al-Obeid, the Palestinian Football Association posted online that their football community had thus far suffered 420 deaths, 103 of whom were children. The total death toll is now in excess of 63,000 people, and the United Nations say the whole of Gaza are at risk of famine.
The non-recognition of Suleiman al-Obeid and his compatriot footballers is of a piece with Fifa and Uefa’s lack of action on the broader situation.
The Palestinian FA stood before Fifa congress in May 2024 and asked for the Israeli FA to be sanctioned and banned from international competition, citing discrimination and the fact the Israeli FA have routinely sanctioned football matches on occupied Palestinian territory.
More than a year on, Fifa have not yet come to a decision. In October the governing body announced they would look into the the Palestinian claims, and delegated the matter to their Disciplinary and Audit and Governance Committees.
At the 2025 Congress in May of this year, the Fifa general-secretary said there was still not yet any decision made, with the committees “diligently” continuing their “highly complex” work. (The Congress started three hours late, by the way, as Infantino was delayed returning from the Middle East, where he was visiting the leaders of Saudi Arabia and Qatar along with Donald Trump.)
The pace of Fifa’s work here would be easier to respect had they not taken only four days to kick Russia out of competition after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Meanwhile, Uefa general secretary Theodore Theodoridis said last year that the European governing body have no intention of banning Israel as they did Russia.
“They are two completely different situations between the two countries”, he said. “Don’t forget the start of the war, you mentioned Ukraine, and the start of what is happening now, which is regrettable now, in the Middle East.”
Uefa are right that the wars began for different reasons, and Fifa are right that some elements of the entire situation are “highly complex.”
But at some point these intellectual justifications for inaction must be made subordinate to the urgency of the horror we see unfolding before our eyes on a daily basis; horrors like the murder of Suleiman al-Obeid, shot dead while seeking humanitarian aid.
The world and its history and its politics are all very complex things but this endless slew of dismembered bodies, flattened landscapes and famished children are not complex. They are a moral outrage on a scale scarcely seen since the second world war.
Thus by he values Fifa and Uefa espouse and the concrete precedent they set in the ostracising of Russia and Belarus, both governing bodies should immediately ban Israel and their club teams from their competitions.
This would send a powerful message: we have stood for this too long, but we will no stand for it no longer.
Do not argue a sporting boycott would have no impact: if international sport had no impact on a country’s self-projection, then it would not garner remotely the level of money and attention it does. The subtext of a decision to ban Russia and not Israel is that the latter’s political actions are in some way more legitimate. They are not legitimate. They are genocidal.
You can have sympathy for the notion that sports bodies should not be expected to lead where political bodies do not while acknowledging that is not sufficient reason alone to absolve Uefa and Fifa of their inaction when it comes to Israel.
It’s time for Uefa and Fifa to stop simply standing by because, as a great man has written, there is no such thing as innocent bystanding.