The secret accolade Salah rejected and the surprising truth it reveals about him

Mo Salah has always been reticent about making the kind of public pronouncements on Islam and the Middle East which might define him as a Muslim. His faith and his place are an intrinsic part of who he is, yet he has never wanted to be defined by them.

In his biography, Chasing Salah, extracts of which were published by Daily Mail Sport last year, author and journalist Simon Hughes describes how the player’s contribution to a magazine cover story article was contingent on the headline being made known to him and his agent, Ramy Abbas.

When the headline was revealed to be ‘The World’s Favourite Muslim’, Abbas declined on Salah’s behalf. Just as he did when Salah was asked to contribute to a positive depiction of Muslims in the aftermath of the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, when an Islamic terrorist’s bomb killed 22 people.

The general reticence underlines the genuine significance of the two brief public interventions Salah has made on the apocalyptic daily reality in Palestine. When Gaza descended into hell in 2023, he quietly made a substantial donation to the Red Crescent charity which was trying to get aid in, and having initially made no statement, eventually released a video statement calling for an end to the bloodshed. ‘It’s not always easy to speak in a time like this,’ were his opening words. Some in the Middle East tell me they felt his message should have been far stronger.

Though Salah has never said as much, it is hard not to feel that one of his early teammates at the Egyptian club El Mokawloon, in an outlying district of Cairo, has influenced his decision to speak on this issue. Hughes’ painstakingly researched book relates the significance to him of Mohamed Samara, a player born in Cairo to Palestinian parents, who played for the Palestinian national team.

Samara was Salah’s guide and confidant in the future Liverpool star’s formative professional days. An older, wiser 28-year-old who would educate his young teammate on the politics of the country in whose colours he played. Salah clearly idolised him.

The contours of their relationship returned to mind when Salah tweeted a response to UEFA’s social media post about Palestinian player, Suleiman Al Obeid, who was killed while queuing for food in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, earlier this month.

UEFA’s tweeted message about Al Obeid on August 8 included no mention of the circumstances of his death, leading Salah to reply: ‘Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?’ Eyewitnesses suggest he was killed by armaments dropped from an Israeli quadcopter drone. One of his family members told the Washington Post he was killed by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell. Images of Al Obeid's brother, Ahmed in a tent after the same alleged attack revealed a deep, stitched scar running down his stomach

Salah would certainly have known of Al Obeid - one of the most recognisable and popular figures in Palestinian soccer, remembered for his scissor kick goal against Yemen in the 2010 West Asian Football Federation Championship, for 24 appearances in the Palestine national team, and for the inspirational figure he became to young players in the Gaza Strip, where the sport commands a devoted following. Many called the 43-year-old the ‘Palestinian Pele.’ He was also known as ‘Henry’, after Thierry Henry, whose style he mimicked. He is survived by a wife, Doaa, and five children. His widow relates how this once venerated player would wear a cap to hide his identity when queuing for food, as he was ashamed to be in need of hand-outs.

There is such a deeply depressing lack of proportionality when it comes to the current assessment of Palestine that you speak for individuals like Suleiman Al Obeid at your peril.

UEFA have found themselves castigated in some quarters for issuing a message about him at all – the accusation levelled at them being that they offered no such public communication about Lior Asulin, the 43-year-old Israeli striker who played professional club football in Israel and who was killed by Hamas terrorists at a music festival in the October 7 attacks.

It has been suggested that Salah might better direct his ‘well meaning’ focus on his own country’s reluctance to grant access to Palestinian refugees. His intervention has been characterised as intellectually flawed: a performative ‘playing to the gallery.’

Such breathtaking and patronising condescension for an individual who, as the biography I cite reveals, is very much a man of his own mind. Any line of attack goes, it would appear, for those who push the dodgy thesis that Hamas’ slaughter of 1,195 Israelis 22 months ago denies anyone, Egyptian footballer or otherwise, the right to pose a question about the dismemberment of a country in which a quarter of all inhabitants – more than 500,000 people – are now starving, according to the UN and multiple international aid organisations.

The death toll of Palestinian footballers alone since October 2023 is 414, according to the Palestinian Football Association, including 103 who are classified as children. More than 1,500 health workers have been killed, too, along with more than 200 journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders. Part of a total death toll of 60,000. The ‘double-tap’ bombing of a hospital this week added a further 20, five of them journalists.

The i Paper’s Katherine Lucas put some perspective on that figure of 414 footballers, a few weeks back, observing that it equated to the entirety of the England football squad, 17 times over, and that the world would very much know about this, were it ‘our’ number.

The Palestinian figure is barely known, as much a part of the fog of that country’s destruction as the names of those players who have perished alongside Al Obeid. Mohammed Barakat, Ismail Abu Dan, Shadi Abu al-Araj to name a few more who you will not have heard of.

It the video message he issued, Salah did not exude the confidence we are accustomed to seeing from him on the field. This was clearly not his natural domain. Yet what he offered the world was wise. ‘All lives are sacred and must be protected,’ he said. ‘The escalations are painful to witness.’ Surely even those bound up with their obsessions about bias could not argue with that?