Palestinian soccer player Mahmoud Al-Sarsak waves to people upon his arrival in Gaza City July 10, 2012. Israel released the Gaza soccer player on Tuesday in a deal to end his intermittent four-month hunger strike after he spent three years behind bars without being put on trial, officials said.

I don’t know all of the details about why he was held but being the hardcore football enthusiast that I am, this is great. Of course, the bad news is that those are three formative years that he’ll never have back but the good news is that he’s still young (24/25) so he can still play football for years to come and hopefully he does.

It should be noted that plenty of people within FIFA (including Sepp Blatter), UEFA, FIFPro, former footballing legends and others were pressuring Israel to free Mahmoud Al-Sarsak. [EI]

The Guardian has a video at this link. [The Guardian]