Osama Abdul Mohsen, a Syrian refugee who was tripped by a camerawoman while carrying his son and fleeing Hungarian authorities, has been offered asylum and a job in Spain at a soccer coaching center.
A former soccer coach in Syria, Abdul Mohsen and his son Zaid attracted global sympathy after the video went viral on social media. The Hungarian camerawoman, who worked for a right wing television station, has since been fired and apologized publicly for her conduct.
In the aftermath of the incident, Abdul Mohsen’s fortune has taken a dramatically different turn, as he and Zaid are now set to settle in the Madrid suburb of Getafe.
Spain’s Football Coach Training Centre (Cenafe) has offered Abdul Mohsen a job and accommodation. The center sent an Arabic speaker named Mohamed Labrouzi to bring him and his two sons by train to Madrid on Wednesday. “We will work with Getafe FC so that the father can coach there, seeing as he has experience in that area,” Sara Hernández, mayor of Getafe, said at a press conference on Wednesday. “This is a step to show the solidarity of the city of Getafe in response to this human drama.”
In Syria, Abdul Mohsen coached with a first division team called Al-Foutwa. “When we saw the story of Mohsen published in the newspapers we felt very bad about it,” Cenafe’s President Miguel Ángel Galán told Spanish newspaper El País.
“We are a center for coaches and we like to help everyone who works in this area,” Cenafe director Conrado Galán also said to El País.
As the migrant crisis has continued to unfold in recent weeks, European soccer teams have pledged their support of refugees in numerous ways. German club Bayern Munich has led the way by promising to donate $1.1 million to help refugees and set up a training camp for those who arrive in Munich. “FC Bayern see it as its social responsibility to help those fleeing and suffering children, women and men, to support them and accompany them in Germany,” Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge said in a statement.
Bayern also recently brought migrant children out onto the pitch before a game.
Many teams in the Bundesliga (the German professional soccer league’s first division) will wear ‘Refugees Welcome’ patches this season. Other German teams have also done their part to welcome refugees. “While teams like Schalke, Mainz and Hertha Berlin have all hosted thousands of refugees at either games or practice sessions, eighth-tier team SG Egelsbach has gone ahead and set up a team for migrants called ‘Refugees United’,” Huffington Post reported.
Teams participating in Europe’s premier club soccer competitions — the Champions League and the second tier Europa League — will donate 1 Euro per ticket from each team’s first home game to refugees. English club Arsenal followed suit against Stoke this past weekend. The club has already donated around 400,000 British Pounds to Syrian refugees since 2012.
As Rummenigge recently said: “Football (soccer), too, has responsibility.”