The Syrian refugee who was tripped by a Hungarian camera operator is headed to the Spanish city of Getafe, near Madrid, after a Spanish football academy offered to help him rebuild his life and restart his career as a football coach.
Osama Abdul Mohsen made headlines around the world after video emerged earlier this month showing Petra Laszlo of Hungary's N1TV sticking her leg out to trip Mr Mohsen - who was carrying his seven-year-old son - as he attempted to dart past authorities at the border hotspot of Röszke.
Mr Mohsen made it to Germany, where media reported that he had been a coach for al-Fotuwa, a first-division football team in Syria, before the civil war forced his family to flee their hometown of Deir el-Zour.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/O66GE5BRKWP22UV7ULLFIODWPA.jpg)
News of his football past sent those at Spain’s Cenafe, an academy dedicated to training football coaches, into action. “When we saw the story of Mohsen published in the newspapers we felt terrible,” Cenafe’s Conrado Galan told El Pais.
With the help of Mohamed Labrouzi, one of the school's coaching graduates who speaks Arabic, the academy reached out to Mr Mohsen, offering to help bring his family to Spain and rebuild his career as a football coach. Mr Mohsen was thrilled with the idea, said Mr Galan.
The academy sent Labrouzi to Munich this week to help Mr Mohsen and his two sons travel to Getafe, a small city on the outskirts of Madrid, where the academy has arranged accommodation.
“We used money from our advertising budget to pay for an apartment for them in Getafe,” explained Mr Galan.
Mr Mohsen's wife and two other children remain in Turkey, but the hope is to reunite the family in Spain within a week, said Mr Galan.
The focus will then shift to helping them apply for asylum and Spanish lessons. “As soon as he learns Spanish, we plan to offer him a job at our organisation,” said Mr Galan.
On Wednesday, Getafe mayor Sara Hernandez said the city was also willing to do whatever necessary to help Mohsen and his family settle into their new lives. The city is already in talks with local football club Getafe FC to explore the possibility of hiring Mohsen as a coach, she added.
After footage of her tripping Mohsen and kicking other refugees went viral, Petra Laszlo apologised for her actions but denied accusations of racism. She was fired from her job at N1TV, a Hungarian nationalist television channel, and now faces criminal charges.
Guardian