Palestine's trinity of strikers mark Easter Weekend with goals
Wessam Abou Ali, Oday Dabbagh, and Assad Al-Hamlawi scored on consecutive days showcasing Palestine's abundance of talent at the position.
The discourse around many national teams is how rare it is to find a pure striker in the modern game. In response to market demands, academies have created footballers that are over trained and lack that intangible element of sniffing out goals.
In the case of Palestine, they have lucked into a generation of strikers born between 1998 and 2000 who know how to find the back of the net. They are the products of distinct environments.
In an interview with Football Palestine last year Oday Dabbagh recounted how indifferent he was when it came to watching football matches. He just wanted to play with his friends and have fun.
Wessam Abou Ali was a top rated prospect and Danish youth international before declaring for Palestine.
Assad Al-Hamlawi grew up in Helsingborg but was far removed from the elite of Swedish football. He made his professional debut in the fourth division before his hometown club snatched him up and gave him an Allsvenskan debut. In spite of his goal scoring promise he had to go to Poland to make an impact in the top flight.
Now all three are teammates with the national team who could ride their goals glory in 2027 and beyond.
Easter Weekend showed just how good all three strikers are. Wessam Abou Ali got the party started on Saturday night with a brace that delivered Columbus Crew their first win of the season. He was voted into the Team of the Week for his efforts.
Then Oday Dabbagh responded scoring a goal that brought Zamalek level with Al-Masry en route to a 4-1 win. The striker now has double digit goals on the season and is one off the golden boot pace in the Premier League.
On Pasquetta, Assad Al-Hamlawi joined the party finishing off a sweeping move to give Craiova a 2-0 lead in the 61st minute against CFR Cluj. The 25 year old now has 13 goals and 4 assists in 25 starts across all competitions.
All three players are their team’s respective top scorers and while it is too early to tell whether Abou Ali’s Columbus will challenge for silverware both Oday Dabbagh and Assad Al-Hamlawi could win league titles in Egypt and Romania, respectively.
Not only did the weekend feature goals for Palestinians in Europe, Africa, and the Americas but there was a goal on the Asian continent as well with Alaa Aldeen Hassan marking his recent transfer from Al-Arabi to Al-Gharafa by scoring in a 3-2 loss to Duhail.