eyewitness
national team too. Two weeks later,
“The Cedars” held the mighty South
Korea, with Son Heung-min leading the
attack, to a draw in qualification for the
2022 World Cup, a result that followed
wins over Turkmenistan and Sri Lanka.
With three games of the second stage
remaining, the Cedars are just a point
off the top spot. Making it to the final
round was by no means a given but,
here too, there was optimism.
Not anymore. The national team
has not played a game in 2020, with
coronavirus bringing Asian football to
a halt. But the outbreak is far from the
only problem that Lebanon has had
to deal with.
The 2019-20 season started but Al
Ahed played just one game before it was
suspended inJanuary. This was not an
early response to the spread of COVID
but due to political, social and economic
issues. Amid growing anti-government
protests, the basketball and volleyball
leagues stopped and football just
couldn’t continue either.
“We took every effort to avoid the
worst decision, since cancelling an
entire sports season is disastrous to
any sport and to football in particular.
But the economic crisis has impacted
all industries,” Lebanese Football
Association’s president Hachem Haidar
said. “The security situation, in particular
the heavy clashes between protesters
and security forces, compelled us,
begrudgingly, to suspend the season.”
There was talk of a return to stadiums
when the situation improved but that
did not happen. Anti-government
protests did stop but that was because
of the arrival of COVID-19 rather than
any breakthrough elsewhere. In May,
the season was officially written off.
In terms of public health, the global
pandemic has not hit the country of
almost seven million as badly as some
of those in Europe and elsewhere.
At the end of September, there had
been a relatively small 347 deaths from
just over11,000 cases. The economic
effects on the already struggling country
have been devastating however and the
football industry has not escaped.
“It came at a really bad time,”
Wael Akram Chehayeb, chairman of
the Lebanon FA’s marketing committee,
said. “We tried to get football back and
it just didn’t happen, then COVID-19
came and that was it.”
From an economic point of view,
football in Lebanon has long been in
a more precarious position than most
in the Middle East. For decades, the
country has been trying to catch up
with the rest of the region.
In1982, when Kuwait, a country with
a smaller population, was playing at the
World Cup, Lebanon was seven years
into a bloody civil war and had just been
invaded by Israel. In1990 when the
United Arab Emirates, another regional
rival with a smaller population, reached
Italia ’90, the war was still four months
away from ending. It obviously devastated
everything. When football finallyreturned, it was a long way behind.
There wasn’t enough money around
to close the gap.
Unlike elsewhere in the Middle East,
there were no wealthy sheiks and few
businessmen looking to own clubs in
Lebanon. Lots of big-name stars and
coaches have spent time in Saudi
Arabia, United Arab Emirates and
Qatar but the likes of Diego Maradona,
Gabriel Batistuta or Xavi never made
it to Beirut.
Theremaynothavebeen much
money in football but there has long
been plenty of the kind of sectarian
politics that have been part of Lebanese
life since independence from France in- In fact, the lack of money has
allowed politicians and other groups
to get involved in Lebanese football
relatively cheaply.
Teams such as Sagesse SC were
founded by Maronite Catholics with the
Druze community leaning towards Safa.
And then there is Al Ahed. They have
Goalscorer...Nader
Matar celebrates
Lebanon’s opener
v Turkmenistan