PALESTINO PRIDE AS THEY EYE GLORY IN COPA LIBERTADORES
▶ Chilean club flies flag for Middle East in South America, writes
The home team unveiled new jerseys on Saturday. By half-time at La Cisterna, an old, lowslung stadium in the southern suburbs of Santiago, Chile, those who wore it were entitled to regard it as a lucky charm. In their novel shirts, green-and-white hoops with a busy mosaic of badges and flags across the chest to signal various global alliances, Palestino had raced to a 3-0 lead over Cobreloa.
It was 5-0 by full-time, an emphatic scoreline to start off Chile’s league season, an even better result given the players in the club’s third-choice kit had some second-string elements to their line-up. Key men had been rested in anticipation of a higher-stakes fixture three days later.
That game is today, when La Cisterna anticipates cheering a club with a unique historical pedigree towards a threshold that only comes around once a decade, at best – progress to the Copa Libertadores group stage.
Hold onto the 2-1 first leg advantage they brought home from Portuguesa of Venezuela last week, and Palestino will be one qualifying round away from joining the likes of Brazil’s Flamengo and Fluminense and Argentina’s River Plate in the group phase of South America’s equivalent of the Champions League.
With that would come significant global projection. For Palestino, generally no more than middleweight performers in the top division of Chilean football, that sort of projection matters well beyond the pitch or on the annual accounts. The clue here is in the club’s name.
Above the stadium fly the flags of Chile and of Palestine. Parallel to the touchline hangs a 50-metre banner with the words ‘Palestino, More Than A Team, An Entire People’.
Some supporters wear keffiyehs. Those dressed in replica team shirts carry the flag of Palestine on their chests, and those wearing certain older replicas have the outline of the map of Palestine, as it was pre-partition in 1947, on their backs.
The same map appears in silhouette on the sleeves of the current Palestino jersey in all its forms, be it the traditional white, with green, black and red trims or the new-look, occasional-use strip with its green hoops.
The association with Palestine stretches back over a century, Club Deportivo Palestino being perhaps the most conspicuous single institution representing the large population of Chileans of Palestinian heritage. They number up to half a million according to some estimates, a community built up through various waves of migration dating back to the 1800s. No region outside the Middle East has more citizens with Palestinian backgrounds than Chile.
For a talented young Chilean footballer whose family tree extends its branches across the 8,000-plus miles from South America’s west coast to Palestine, Palestino are the natural club of choice. But for the ambitious Chilean footballer, they have not always looked like the summit of professional aspiration. The domestic hierarchy is dominated by clubs like Colo-Colo and Universidad Catolic; Palestino have won the league just twice, most recently way back in 1978.
So to be within touching distance of the Libertadores group phase is a rare high. It’s been nine years since Palestino last kept that elite company.
And as the team surged up the table, La Cisterna was staging powerful gestures of solidarity with those suffering and dying in the escalating conflict in Gaza. Last November, a section of seats were left empty for a home game, beneath a banner remembering victims of the war. “All of us, from the coaching staff to the players know we are part of a very special club,” said the Palestino manager, Pablo ‘Vitamina’ Sanchez, ahead of the home showdown with Portuguesa.
“It makes us proud that when we do well, we are giving some moments of happiness well beyond Chile and to people in different cities and towns where there is great suffering at the moment.”
Viewing figures for live international broadcasts of Palestino matches and the club’s footprint on social media testify to
Palestino’s broad following far outside their own continent. “We see it in how social media brings us all these messages at all times of day and night,” notes Bryan Carrasco, the experienced Palestino winger, “and it gives us a real sense of pride to take that support across our continent into an international competition.”
Palestino can now add significant numbers of Scots to their following, too. The new shirt the players premiered at the weekend was inspired by Celtic’s, the design referencing the Glasgow club’s crest, with a four-leaf clover on the chest above a Palestine flag.
The link is this: Celtic supporters, led by the Green Brigade group of fans, have a history of embracing pro-Palestine causes. The Scottish club were fined by Uefa for the fans’ huge display of Palestine flags around Celtic Park for the Champions League match against Atletico Madrid.
Palestino have had their issues with symbols and their sport’s authorities, Chile’s Football Association prohibiting a shirt design that had the 1947 map of Palestine outlined less discreetly than its current place as a small silhouette on the sleeve.
Elsewhere, spectators wearing Palestino shirts while attending matches in places as far away as the Parc des Princes in Paris or at last month’s Africa Cup of Nations in Ivory Coast have reported stewards asking them to remove or cover the jerseys because of regulations outlawing political symbols in stadiums.
Win today, and 11 eager footballers – plus a small, loyal band of travelling Chilean fans – will next month be proudly wearing their Palestino shirts in Paraguay or in Colombia, where the team would go for the next step of their Libertadores adventure.