‘It touched us from the start’: Palestine savour historic night in Bilbao
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Sid Lowe at San Mamés Mon, 17 November 2025 at 8:00 am UTC·10 min read “We are more than a national team, we represent a story of pain but also hope,” Ihab Abu Jazar said, “and we are not alone.” At 8.26pm on Saturday the Palestine coach, whose father was killed in the Israel-Gaza war and whose siblings now live in tents in Khan Younis, emerged from the tunnel and took his place by the bench at San Mamés, Bilbao. Dressed in black, a keffiyeh over his shoulders, he watched 11 men in red, “a team of refugees playing for Palestinians all over the world”, and listened to 51,396 people applaud them, chanting for their freedom. “We don’t play just to win; we play to exist,” he had said in the days...