Sport
Palestine's football federation draws the Thousand Martyrs Cup this afternoon
Graphic: Times of Palestine
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The Palestinian Football Association draws the Thousand Martyrs Cup at five o'clock this afternoon, in five rooms at once, and Palestinian football will have a fixture list again for the first time in more than three years.
The draw runs simultaneously across the federation's branches: the northern branch at the Tubas Sports Club, the central branch at the Joseph Blatter Academy in Ramallah, the southern branch at the Childhood Welfare Centre in Hebron, the southern governorates at the hall of Khadamat al-Nuseirat in the Gaza Strip, and the diaspora branch at the federation's office in Sidon, Lebanon.
The first round is a group stage organised by governorate and branch, with clubs drawn into groups of four or five and the top two from each advancing to the second round. Jibril Rajoub, the federation's president, put the entry at 226 clubs when he announced the format, across the northern governorates, Jerusalem, the southern governorates and the diaspora.
Friday, six in the evening#
Play begins on Friday 4 September at six, with an opening ceremony held at the same hour in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and Beirut.
Three matches kick off together. In the northern governorates, Jabal al-Mukaber meet Shabab al-Khalil at the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium in al-Ram. In the southern governorates, Shabab Rafah play Khadamat Rafah. In Lebanon, al-Ansar face al-Nahda inside the Ain al-Hilweh camp.
That last fixture is the part of the draw worth pausing on. A national cup whose opening night runs from a Jerusalem stadium to a Rafah pitch to a refugee camp near Sidon is describing, in a fixture list, a country its own players cannot cross.
What the tournament is and is not#
Rajoub has been plain that this is exhibition play: no league table, no promotion, no relegation, with the eighth professional season to be dated next year. The competition is named for the athletes killed in the war — 1,014 by the federation's count, alongside 265 sporting facilities damaged or destroyed.
Squad rules allow thirty players aged nineteen and over, with up to ten under-18s registered and four permitted in any single match — a concession to how many footballers of squad age are dead, wounded, displaced or unable to reach a pitch.
Registration closed on 25 August. The national team plays a friendly tournament in China this month before the Asian Cup in Saudi Arabia in January.
On Friday evening, in three places at once, the whistle goes.
