Two travelling supporters killed, having been made targets, investigators believe, simply because of their affiliation with a national team. The European Championship, whose finals begin in Germany in less than eight months’ time, now bears the permanent memory of the Swedes who lost their lives in Brussels while on the way to watch a Belgium-Sweden qualifier. According to the Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson, they were shot last Monday “only for being Swedish” in “an attack aimed at Sweden,” where there have been several episodes of public Quran-burning this year.
While Belgian police are persuaded the gunman, a Tunisian national shot dead by officers the next morning, acted alone, the direct impact of a shocking act of terror and of the broader context of the Israel-Hamas war is to heighten security preparations around Euro 2024. Sport might prefer to play on in a minor key amid conflict but it cannot help but be foregrounded by events in Brussels and by the very live current of anger and protest feeding into football’s major theatres and institutions. In Germany this weekend: amplified rows over the relative rights or wrongs of one Bundesliga club, Mainz, suspending a player, Anwar El Ghazi, for what his employer described as “unacceptable” social media posting about the conflict in Gaza; while another, Bayern Munich, travelled to Mainz having not sanctioned their full back Noussair Mazraoui for expressing support on social media for Palestinian suffering. This weekend in English stadiums: Israeli and Palestinian flags prohibited.
In Germany next June, the Israeli flag may very well be carried through streets and into stadiums as fan paraphernalia, as much a part of the tournament’s pageant as the Sweden colours being worn in Brussels last Monday. The Israel national men’s team are as close as they have ever been, since Uefa gave them a “European” home for qualifying purposes in the 1990s, to reaching a Euros. Had this month’s fixtures, against Switzerland and Kosovo, not been postponed because of the bloodshed in the south of the country and in Gaza, Israel might now be in one of the automatic qualifying berths in Group I. As it is, they are guaranteed a place in the spring play-offs and likely to have a favourable draw there because of impressive showings in the relevant Uefa Nations League campaign.
Where Israel’s delayed home group game against the Swiss, called off two weeks ago and rescheduled for November 15, takes place or when they go to Kosovo is yet to be determined. What is more and more probable is that Uefa and Fifa, sooner rather than later, will be accommodating Israel at a major men’s showpiece, and inevitably making bespoke security plans around that probability. Israel is a national team on the up, narrow losers to Scotland in the play-off stage of the last Euros and with leading individuals increasingly present in the glamour venues of the club game: Manor Solomon at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium; the goalkeeper Daniel Peretz at Bayern’s Allianz Arena. It is a football culture whose coaching expertise is wanted by Champions League clubs abroad: Barak Bakhar is the Israeli manager who had Red Star Belgrade 1-0 up at Manchester City last month.
It is also a national team, in ordinary circumstances, with every prospect of becoming stronger through the era of expanded tournaments, 24-nation Euros and 48-team World Cups designed to make space for countries without long histories of reaching these events. In the months before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Israel’s football was looking at these broad future horizons with unprecedented optimism. Some of its clubs, boosted by many years of participation in Uefa competitions, are reaping the benefits of well-run academies. There had been a fresh pride at how Israel’s football presented itself internationally, not only the level of achievement but the way, in the national jersey, the country could see a side of itself far removed from some of the voices in a government lurching further to the right.
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In June, in Argentina, Israel twice came back from behind to beat Brazil at the Under-20 World Cup, the first equaliser scored by Anan Khalaili; the second, dragging the quarter-final into extra time, by Hamza Shibli. Both are Arab-Israelis, figureheads for a cohort compiling an impressive collection of podium finishes. Israel’s tyros finished that World Cup with the bronze medal. The following month, their under-21 team reached the semi-finals of the European Championship, defeated by the champions-to-be England. It was the summer, wrote the Jerusalem Post, where “millions watched a blue-and-white soccer team’s Arabs and Jews harmonize en route to victory after victory, openly displaying friendships that the bigots above us, from both sides of the conflict, find unnatural at best, abominable at worst. There is such an Israel.”
If that seems impossibly distant and dreamy amid the bloodshed either side of the Gaza border, the longer-term aspirations for those under-21 players suddenly look more perilous than they did. Most would still be active as footballers in 2034, where the likelihood is that Saudi Arabia — a country whose anticipated political rapprochement with Israel of three weeks ago is now abruptly on hold — hosts the World Cup.
Qualify for the 2030 World Cup, when Israel’s current 20 and 21-year-olds would be peaking as professionals, and — at least until Fifa make special arrangements around the draw — the team could be playing games in Morocco, the tournament co-hosts. Morocco and Israel reached significant, landmark diplomatic agreements in 2020, but you tend not to hear them articulated whenever Morocco’s standout current footballer, Achraf Hakimi, plays for Paris Saint-Germain in Israeli stadiums. There, he is routinely booed because of previously voiced support for Palestine.
Palestine’s own national team, perennially homeless and with no developed structure of streamline academies to lean on, are meanwhile confronted with the challenges, amid a war, of preparing for the Asian Cup, the continental equivalent of the Euros, in Qatar in January. They are also struggling to find somewhere to safely host next month’s World Cup qualifier against Australia.
“What is happening in Israel is terrible. We should be clear most of all about that,” Philipp Lahm, a tournament director for Euro 2024 and former Germany captain, told reporters at an event designed to promote the event last week. “But when we don’t know when qualifying matches are going to played, it’s not easy for the European Championship.”
