BZU hosts the Professional Barcelona Player "Lilian Thuram"

The Professional Barcelona soccer player, "Lilian Thuram," explained that football plays an important role in building an identity for the Palestinian people, and the Palestinians are able to pass on important messages to the world through a football game.

 This came during a meeting in which the professional player Thuram, was hosted by the Centre for Continuing Education at BZU, in cooperation with the French Consulate on 13/04/2011. The event was attended by a large number of students and faculty members, and is part of  the Diploma Program in Sports Management.

The player Lilian Thuram  gave a briefing on his life, where he was born on the 1st of January 1972, and was like any small kid playing football, dreaming to become famous and one of the international players. He began his career at the French club of Monaco ,and played for the first time in the World Cup of 1990-1991, in which his team won the Cup of France, and in 2006-2008, Thuram joined  Barcelona.

 The floor was open for questions by students, which were answered by the guest. He was asked  about his impression of the Palestinian people in his first visit to Palestine, he said that his impression is good, where he noticed many differences and advised the Palestinian players to continue exercising in order to improve their athletic abilities.

When talked about racial discrimination and whether he was subject to racial discrimination on the basis of color during his career, he responded that he had suffered from that, explaining that when he played in Italy, children and others used to make a noise when the black players touched the ball, as if we  are monkeys, and they used to throw on us bananas, but this did not affect him because his self-confidence is high. When asked about FIFA's  role, Thuram explained that FIFA is against racial discrimination, but FIFA alone is not enough, since discrimination is a part of the society's culture , and therefore we must re-think in the way we bring up our generations and in the educational curricula as well.