It’s the last day of July 2023, a mid-table clash in the top division of Swedish football. Sirius are hosting AIK, a grander club from greater Stockholm, in Uppsala. It’s not been a great afternoon for either side’s No 9. Wessam Abou Ali, of Sirius, finishes on the losing team, thanks to a very late goal. AIK's Omar Faraj, still in recuperation from injury, sits the match out on the bench.
Fast forward 14 months and these two footballers find themselves in vastly different situations. They are preparing for the most celebrated derby in the Arab world, rivals on either side of Cairo’s great sporting divide, Al Ahly versus Zamalek. It’s a collision exported for the night to Riyadh’s Kingdom Stadium with a continental trophy at stake, the Confederation of African Football’s Super Cup, the annual showpiece that pits the holders of the Champions League against the winners of the CAF Confederations Cup.
It’s 30 years since the two Egyptian giants have coincided as owners of those respective titles, and it’s absolutely unprecedented for any Cairo derby to feature a Palestine international centre-forward in both squads – a guarantee that Friday's Al Ahly-Zamalek clash (10pm UAE time) will resonate just that bit louder across Egypt’s troubled western border.
That pair are Abou Ali and Faraj. Fitness permitting, they will be meeting up again early next month for World Cup qualifiers against Iraq and Kuwait, determined that Palestine progress further along the road to a possible place at the 2026 finals.
It is all a very long way from Uppsala, where a summer ago, Abou Ali was still finding his feet in Swedish football, advancing a young career that had already bounced back from serious injury and health scares, and he and Faraj were both contemplating a crossroads in their international career. The latter had been called up by his native Sweden earlier in the year, and played in two friendlies. But, like Abou Ali, who was born in Denmark – for whom he played at junior level – Faraj’s family are from Palestine.
Earlier this year, both completed Fifa’s formalities for switching their international registrations. Both debuted for Palestine in June. Both moved to Cairo either side of those debuts.
While there is nothing novel in Ahly and Zamalek mirroring one another in their manoeuvres in the transfer market, or jousting with one another to see who can make the biggest headline in pre-season captures – Zamalek have this week been linked with Sergio Ramos, the veteran ex-Real Madrid and Spain captain – the arrival at both of Cairo’s super clubs of two potential pillars of the Palestine national team marks a particular moment in time.
Both players decided to commit to representing the country of their heritage as conflict and suffering in Gaza escalated over the past 12 months. “It's about heart,” Abou Ali told Fifa's official site. “Everyone knows what the country is going through.”
“Given what is happening, it felt like an obvious choice,” Faraj explained to Swedish reporters shortly before joining up with the Palestine squad for the first time. “To be able to contribute with the little I can do. What we players try to do on the pitch may not be much, but we want to help as best we can. I want to get to know my country more. I want to give pride to the country and the people – hopefully by reaching a World Cup.”
That ambition seemed very real earlier this month when Palestine held a powerful South Korea to a goalless draw in Seoul, although when Faraj and Abou Ali left the pitch together at the end of their subsequent 3-1 defeat to Asian Cup finalists Jordan, they faced up to the full size of the task.
They are part of a team whose supporting infrastructure has been battered, of a team obliged, because of the conflict, to play all their ‘home’ games in neutral venues. That will be Doha in October, when World Cup qualification resumes with Palestine a point off the pace for a spot in the next round.
Egypt, in common with other Middle East and North African nations, has offered support to the wounded football of Palestine, notably in exempting Palestinian footballers at Egyptian clubs from rules limiting the number of foreign players sides can field in the Egyptian league.
It opens opportunity and was a significant detail in Al Ahly’s pursuit of Abou Ali, from Sirius, in the last winter transfer window, and of Zamalek’s bid, accepted by AIK earlier this month, for Faraj.
And there can hardly be a greater showcase, week in, week out, for a Palestinian sportsman, than playing for one of the Cairo grandees, clubs with huge followings in Gaza and the West Bank.
Nor can the impact of Abou Ali, 25, at Al Ahly be anything but a stimulus for the newcomer Faraj. Despite only arriving in Cairo part of the way through last season, Abou Ali finished the 2023/24 Egyptian Premier League as its top scorer, with 18 goals, at a ratio of one for every 76 minutes he was on the pitch.
He contributed to the other half of Al Ahly’s double too, with a goal in the semi-final triumph over DR Congo’s TP Mazembe en route to his club lifting their record-extending 12th African Champions Cup title. “I had a great first six months and I’m super proud to play for Al Ahly,” he said. “It’s a big, big club and you feel the aura around the team and the city.”
The next nine months hold the promise of even more, of global adventures but some risk of exhaustion. Besides the usual suite of domestic and Champions League dates, Al Ahly will follow the highly charged African Super Cup by cramming into next month the domestic Super Cup mini-tournament, staged in Abu Dhabi, and the meeting with Al Ain in Cairo for a place in the penultimate round of Fifa’s Intercontinental Cup. Come June, they will be at the expanded, 32-team Club World Cup in the USA.
It’s a diary that, with all its rewards for recent success, cannot help but cast a shadow over rivals Zamalek, although their squad set off for Riyadh emboldened by May’s capture of the Confederations Cup, the club’s first African trophy since winning the 2020 Super Cup, and with optimism over the quality of their new signings.
Moroccan full-back, Mahmoud Bentayg, has come in from France’s Saint-Etienne. There is flair in the Polish winger Konrad Michalak and the teenaged Senegalese forward Sidy Ndiaye.
And there are high hopes for the imposing Faraj, 22, to whom AIK said farewell to with some reluctance. “Omar himself very much wanted to make the move, so we allowed him to go,” said the Swedish club’s sporting director, Thomas Berntsen.
It was a move made with the heart, to bring Faraj closer to the land whose flag he now flies.
