Palestine coach Makram Daboub: ‘The players are doing their best but it is not easy’

In their World Cup qualifier against the Socceroos, Palestinian team ‘want to bring a little joy’ to their people amid war

The 7-0 win over Bangladesh in Melbourne last week was about as smooth as possible a start to World Cup qualifying for the Socceroos, but this week’s follow up is set to be anything but. The Socceroos have landed in a troubled Middle East, where they take on Palestine in a game that has been moved to the neutral venue of Kuwait due to the Israel-Hamas war.

Palestine have not played at home since 2019 and are no strangers to disrupted preparations. But they had been scheduled to play Australia in the West Bank city of Ramallah before the 7 October attacks, during which Hamas killed 1,200 people and took more than 240 people hostage. Since then, 13,000 residents of Gaza have been killed in the Israeli offensive and vast swaths of the territory have been reduced to rubble.

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