‘Stop Killing Children’ banner displayed by Uefa ahead of PSG vs Spurs in Super Cup | OneFootball

Uefa contradicted its own rules on promoting political messages in football matches by displaying a giant “Stop Killing Children, Stop Killing Civilians” banner on the pitch before Tottenham and Paris Saint-Germain’s Super Cup clash.

The banner was placed in front of the players as they lined up ahead of kick-off at the Stadio Friuli in Udine.

Europe’s governing body does not allow political messages to be shown in stadiums before, during or after matches, as per its own rulebook.

They nevertheless chose to make this statement but did not name a specific war in the display, involving children from conflict zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, Palestine and Ukraine involved in the opening ceremony.

Two refugee children from Gaza later joining Uefa president Aleksander Ceferin in the medal ceremony.

One of the children was Tala, 12, described by Uefa as “a young Palestinian girl with fragile health who was transferred to Milan to receive appropriate medical care, as the adequate equipment was lacking in Gaza after the start of the war”. Nine-year-old boy Mohamed was the other child involved in the ceremony, who lost his parents in an air strike in Gaza.

It comes after Uefa came under fire from Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah over a tribute towards late Palestinian forward Suleiman Al-Obeid, known as the “Palestinian Pele”, that didn’t acknowledge that he was killed in an Israeli attack. The Palestine Football Association (PFA) said that Al-Obeid, 41, was killed by an Israeli strike targeting civilians waiting for humanitarian aid in the southern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

Salah quoted the tribute on X and added: “Can you tell us how he died, where, and why?” The post currently sits on 1.5m likes and 397,000 retweets, as of the time of writing.

The PFA said on Saturday that 325 players, coaches, administrators, referees and club board members in the Palestinian soccer community have died in the Israeli-Hamas conflict since October 2023.