“It was during the international window when we got a few days off,” says Anwar El Ghazi, remembering the social media post that transformed his life in October 2023.
“I was just on the sofa crying because of the images — horrific images and videos — I’d been seeing of dead children and dead people in Gaza. I got really emotional…”
He stops and trails off.
“… and, yeah, I felt the urge to post something.”
When El Ghazi shared a story on Instagram amid the Israel-Gaza conflict, he did not expect the storm that followed. Though many social media users supported him for being one of the few footballers to speak publicly about the war, one line at the end of the post brought scrutiny and ultimately led to his contract with Mainz, his club in the Bundesliga (the top division of German football), being terminated.
The post concluded: “This isn’t a conflict and it’s not a war. This is genocide and mass destruction and we’re witnessing it happen live. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is a phrase that has been used since the 1960s and is interpreted differently by different people. For some, it is intended as a call for Palestinians to receive the same freedoms in their Middle East region as Israelis. For others, such as the American Jewish Committee, it is antisemitic due to a perception that it calls for the eradication of Israel. Hamas, the group that killed around 1,200 people in terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, has also repeatedly used the phrase.
In Germany, an activist was convicted in Berlin for leading a chant of the phrase last August, although a court in the German state of Bavaria had ruled in June that using the line did not constitute a crime and could not be banned.
El Ghazi, a Dutchman of Moroccan heritage, has insisted throughout that he is “against war and violence”, “against antisemitism”, and “for peace above everything”, and was motivated to post by the killing of children in Gaza. According to global children’s charity UNICEF’s executive director Catherine Russell, speaking in December, 14,500 children have been killed in the territory over the past 14 months.
El Ghazi at court last summer (Arne Dedert/picture alliance via Getty Images)
After posting on Instagram, El Ghazi was suspended by Mainz, who stated they found the post “unacceptable”. Later, the now 29-year-old forward’s contract was ended after standing by his original comment in another social post. The official reason provided by Mainz was “comments and posts from the player on social media”.
In July, a German court found that El Ghazi had been “unfairly dismissed”, with the footballer subsequently receiving a payment of €1.5million (£1.3m, $1.6m at current exchange rates) from the club. El Ghazi said he would donate €500,000 to projects supporting children in Gaza. Mainz are appealing the court’s decision.
El Ghazi has not spoken publicly about proceedings until now. With the club appealing the court’s decision, he says he cannot discuss some aspects of the case publicly. This includes what he meant by the post, his communication with Mainz in this period, or whether he understands why some were offended by it.
“My family always taught me to do the right thing if that’s what you think is right, to stand up for justice,” El Ghazi says of that first post. “It’s a sensitive case for a lot of people. People are afraid. I know loads of players who just don’t want to talk about it because they know they’ll get in trouble over it.
“And I was like, ‘Why should we get in trouble?’. If you see dead children, dead people, how can you live with yourself if you don’t speak out?”
After being sacked by Mainz, it took El Ghazi almost a year to return to football.
Last summer, he signed for Cardiff City of the Championship, English football’s second tier, and as he walks into a coffee shop in the Welsh capital to meet The Athletic, he remarks on the winding path his career has taken.
“I think I’ve had every setback you can have as a player,” he says.
El Ghazi was released by his hometown team, Rotterdam’s Feyenoord, as a child, with coaches telling him he needed better focus, before working his way back into academy football.
Over the years, he has played for Ajax and PSV in the Netherlands, France’s Lille and Aston Villa then Everton in England, from highs of scoring in the Champions League and play-off finals to the lows of injuries and a falling-out with one manager that would lead to him leaving two clubs six years apart.
He was born near Rotterdam to Moroccan immigrant parents, with his father working in a biscuit factory to support the family. After being released by Feyenoord, El Ghazi found himself at another club in the city, Sparta, where he again came close to being let go.
“At one stage in their academy, the manager told me, ‘Listen, I see the talent in you, but from now on, it’s quarter to midnight — it’s your last chance. You have to show yourself, otherwise you’re going to leave again’,” he remembers.
El Ghazi with his parents after signing for Cardiff (Courtesy of Anwar El Ghazi)
He did not go on holiday that summer, training instead. He grew 10cm (four inches) in height over the same period, developing his game and gaining strength. After top-scoring for Sparta at youth level and making the Netherlands’ under-17 and under-18 junior teams, Ajax — historically the biggest and most successful club in the Netherlands, with 36 domestic titles and four European Cup/Champions League wins — came in for him.
After breaking into the first team there under Frank de Boer, having scored eight times in just 150 minutes of football during the 2014-15 preseason, El Ghazi’s first two campaigns were largely successful. He hit 20 goals in 50 appearances in the Eredivisie, while also scoring against Barcelona at their iconic Camp Nou stadium in the Champions League, but subsequently struggled with several small injury issues.
Things came to a head when Peter Bosz succeeded De Boer at the beginning of the 2016-17 season.
“It’s time for people to know the story,” El Ghazi says. “We had an away game and I felt really sick, but we had to train. I told him (Bosz) this, but he just told me to get through it. I trained, but I wasn’t able to train properly, I’d told him I was sick.
“The next day, it was matchday minus one, we came onto the pitch and did 11 v 11 (training). He shared out the bibs for the starting XI, then different bibs for the subs, and I didn’t receive either. The reason I got angry was that we had youth players (involved in the session) because we were short of numbers and they received them ahead of me. When I asked where my bib was, he told me, ‘Just go on the other pitch, you’re shooting with someone else’.
“I shouted at him, ‘What’s this about? How can you disrespect me like that?’. We got into an argument. He sent me inside and that’s how the relationship became broken. He then suspended me, but I came back due to injuries and got back into the team.
“But in January (during the mid-season transfer window), he told me, ‘Listen, it’s not going to work out with you — so it’s better to leave’. I think the argument we had was a heavy one, I’m not going to lie about it.”
Bosz and PSV, where he is now the manager, declined to comment.
After a short spell at Lille, he signed for then Championship side Villa, initially under Steve Bruce, before scoring the first goal in the 2019 play-off final against Derby County to send the club back to the Premier League, which he has previously described as the happiest spell of his career.
El Ghazi left Villa after Steven Gerrard’s appointment as manager in November 2021, with the former Liverpool and England midfielder opting for a system that did not require true wingers. Rafa Benitez promised him game-time at Everton, but he was sacked three days after El Ghazi’s arrival that January — his replacement, Frank Lampard, gave no such assurances.
El Ghazi says Ruud van Nistelrooy, now at Leicester City, is a fine man-manager (Prestige/Soccrates/Getty Images)
He got back on track with a return to Dutch football at PSV the following season, playing regularly under Ruud van Nistelrooy. Speaking just after his countryman had been confirmed as Leicester City manager, fresh from a successful interim spell in charge at Manchester United, El Ghazi is filled with praise.
“What a manager,” he says. “He knows how to trigger players to get the best out of them.
“When I was struggling to find form at PSV, he lent me a book — Letters To A Young Athlete by the former basketball player Chris Bosh. He told me, ‘Read this and come back to me later’. I read it and we had a conversation afterwards. It opened my eyes.”
However, after Van Nistelrooy left late in that 2022-23 season following a dispute with PSV’s board, the club appointed Bosz. As they had fallen out at Ajax years before, El Ghazi was nervous. The pair had a conversation and though El Ghazi says he was happy to stay, he adds, “I knew what time it was.”
A former team-mate had just joined Mainz and was asked by a club director to gauge El Ghazi’s interest in coming aboard, too.
“I said, ‘Why not?’. It’s not far away from Holland, the Bundesliga is a strong league, I had a good conversation with the manager,” he says. “Obviously, I had good options in the Championship, in the Middle East, but I’m very competitive and don’t want to go there at a young age. But I’m still hungry and I still want to showcase my talent. That’s why I signed for Mainz.”
El Ghazi was only at Mainz for two months before he was suspended.
Much of the reaction has been played out in public, with large factions of social media both in support and against him.
“Obviously, I didn’t expect this reaction. Especially if you think you’re doing the right thing. I was in shock as well,” he says. “I didn’t know what was happening. I was in my hotel room, I didn’t even have an apartment (in Mainz) yet. I was just there, on my own, staring at the ceiling and thinking about everything.
“I don’t know what would have happened if Nujum (a non-profit which supports Muslim athletes) were not around me, because my family, my friends, everyone was in shock. We didn’t know what to do.
“I felt alone. The club didn’t support me at all. They didn’t even have a conversation from a welfare perspective. I found out I got suspended (by Mainz) from my agent. I didn’t even know — so that says enough.”
Mainz initially lifted El Ghazi’s suspension, saying he had “distanced himself from his post” in “multiple conversations” with the club and that he “regrets” publishing it.
However, El Ghazi subsequently wrote that he did not regret or wish to distance himself from his posts.
In a statement to The Athletic, Mainz said: “Clearly, we had, and have, a fundamentally different perception of the situation, which is why the courts continue to deal with it.”
During that time, El Ghazi spent most of his time at home in Rotterdam, having employed a personal trainer and working with a small group of seven or eight players to stay fit as he waited for his next opportunity in football.
El Ghazi playing for Mainz before his suspension (Alex Grimm/Getty Images)
As this was happening, his phone was going haywire.
El Ghazi faced racist abuse on social media and pulls out his mobile during our conversation to show The Athletic examples. Since joining Cardiff, he has reported several of these to the UK Football Policing Unit (UKFPU) but there was nothing that could be done as they originated from non-British locations.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been posting about Palestine,” he says. “I used to do it when I was at Villa. I’m used to abuse like, ‘Oh, you’re a s**t player, you’re bad’. I laugh at some reactions. But when it gets to death threats about your family, about your son, or about your wife, your mother, things like that, that hurts. It would hurt any player or person. Those are not the things you want to receive.”
There are particular sensitivities in Germany due to the legacy of the Holocaust, in which an estimated six million Jews were killed under the country’s Nazi regime, and the country’s antisemitism laws are among the strictest in Europe. The man who founded Mainz as a football club in 1905, Eugene Salomon, was among those murdered at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Claiming Mainz had unjustly sacked him, El Ghazi brought a case for wrongful dismissal to the city’s Labour Court.
After the sides failed to reach a settlement and following a short in-person hearing in July, a judge ruled that El Ghazi’s comments were protected under his right to free speech.
Mainz have not commented publicly on the case, except for acknowledging the outcome after the initial verdict and stating they would wait for the written reasons to be released before deciding whether to appeal. They have since appealed the decision.
Despite winning in court, El Ghazi still found it a horrible experience.
“It was nerve-racking,” he says. “It’s obviously not something I do daily. It’s weird, it’s not something you want to do. I was happy to win the case and I think justice has been served.
“Obviously, at that stage, I just wanted to play football again. I wanted it behind me and to carry on, no matter the outcome. But to be honest, I still think today that I haven’t done anything wrong. You can look up all my posts and I think there’s nothing bad about it.
“So I was relieved, happy about the justice I got, but I think I was more relieved, so I could look to a new adventure again, playing football, because that’s what I do, that’s what I love the most.”
El Ghazi celebrates scoring against Derby for Cardiff (Ryan Hiscott/Getty Images)
It is clear the impact that proceedings have had on his career.
“To this day, I’m still working on getting back the fitness and the level that I used to play at because people don’t realise that it’s not easy if you haven’t played for a year,” he says. “It takes a really long time before your body adapts. Lots of clubs said. ‘Oh, good player, but he hasn’t played for a year’. That was the reality.”
With Cardiff, El Ghazi feels as if he has landed on his feet. He has had a run of games in the team and though they have struggled in the league over recent months and are only four points above the relegation places, El Ghazi is scoring goals (two in his past five appearances) and enjoying his football.
“When I made my debut for Cardiff, it was against (bitter local rivals) Swansea and I just had goosebumps. I’m playing in a stadium again, with a derby atmosphere. I can remember how nervous I was when I made my debut as a young guy at Ajax, but here I wasn’t really nervous. I was just happy that I could finally stand on the pitch again.
“I will never forget Cardiff for this. I’m very grateful for the opportunity they gave me and even the fans, they support me. That’s why I feel really at home here. I’m very grateful to be here.”
(Top photo: ANP via Getty Images)
