While McClaren’s stalwarts huffed and puffed and only managed a goalless draw at the end of all their labours a far more important football game was played out nearby.Kevin Mitchell writing about the game in the Guardian says…
“160 kids, aged between 10 and 14, from Arab and Jewish villages in northern Israel arrived in the capital to take part in the sort of cross-community tournament .
It was about football – and it wasn’t about football at all. Playing in kit supplied by 16 English and Scottish league and non-league clubs, they provided a multicoloured mosaic as pleasing to the eye as those that decorate the temples of worship their parents regard as sacred. Except, consumed by the joy of their football, they left behind the prejudices that often go with religion.”
The rest of this very poignant write up on what football should really be all about can be read here..
Articles in the Mirror and Independent on the same theme can be read here and here.