Football season is reaching it’s climax (the football that uses feet, not hands), and several finals matches are about to take place, one of them. Arguably the most prestigious of them all is the English FA Cup final tonight, between Manchester City and Wigan Athletic.
The Telegraph has an article about Wigan’s goalkeeper, the Omani Ali Al-Habsi, and how he became the first ever Middle Easterner to play in the FA Cup final.
Wigan’s Ali Al Habsi today becomes the first Middle East player to play in an FA Cup final. He tells Jim White about his personal journey.
For Wigan the next one is the biggest in the club’s history. And for Al Habsi himself, it offers the chance of rehabilitation. He has played in every round of the FA Cup, was recalled for the semi-final against Millwall last month and is cheerfully hopeful that he will be stepping out at Wembley this afternoon. If he does he will be making history himself: the Omani will be the first player from the Middle East to play in an FA Cup final. The very thought has been making national news back home.
“I feel that honour,” he says. “Everywhere in Oman people are speaking about the Cup final. Not just in Oman, actually, but across the Middle East. Everyone wants Wigan to win now. Except maybe in Abu Dhabi.”
That is, of course, not true.
There’s this small country in the Middle East – you might have not heard of it – called Israel, which for the past 2 decades has been sending football players to play in the English Premier League.
One such player is former Israel national team captain, Yossi Benayoun, who 7 years ago played in the FA Cup final with West Ham United against Liverpool FC, (and please, no pig jokes).
http://youtu.be/TsApNfJ06eI
But he’s not the only one.
3 years ago, Tal Ben-Haim, then playing for Portsmouth, was in the roster for his team – though didn’t play – in the 2010 FA Cup final against Chelsea.
I don’t know why Jim White wrote this fallacy, but one can only hope that it’s because of oversight, short memory, or the lack of fact-checking, and not some more sinister belief that erased Israel from the Middle East.
