Palestine’s Dabbagh Explores New Sports

After breaking, surfing, and skating, squash, lacrosse, and American flag football are next. You never know with new, slightly off-field sports joining the Olympics.

Oday Dabbagh tells FIFA that footvolley or padel may have a place, and Palestine may be able to use one of its best athletes.

“I enjoy many sports because I studied physical education as a kid. All kinds of activities outside of football, but padel and footvolley are my favorites.” A Palestinian football legend has used the 11-a-side game as a career, lifeline, and consolation for over a decade. Nation’s sluggish No11, capable with his right, clinical with his left, and deadly in the air.

Still 25, Dabbagh travels far from Jerusalem’s twisting neighborhoods to Charleroi, a former Belgian industrial city, where he plays for the top-flight club.

From making his senior debut for Hilal Al-Quds in the West Bank Premier League at 16 to playing in two AFC Asian Cup competitions and scoring his nation’s second-ever goal, it has been a crazy ride.

After coming on as a substitute for Portuguese side Arouca in a league match against Porto in August 2021, he became the first Palestinian-born player in a major European league.