The U21 teams Israel and Poland organized a moment of remembrance on their own during the European Championship qualification.
At the start of the game in Lodz on Friday (November 17th, 2023), the players of both teams paused immediately after kick-off, stood and remained silent instead of playing. There was no official minute of silence planned by UEFA. With the minute’s silence, players remembered the victims of the Palestinian militant Hamas’ attack against Israel on October 7, in which more than 1,200 people were killed. Poland won the game 2-1, the U21 European Championship will take place in Slovakia in the summer of 2025.
UEFA called for a minute’s silence on October 17th
However, UEFA itself had scheduled a minute’s silence. For the games on October 17th, there was a minute’s silence in all stadiums “in memory of all members of the European football family who have been killed in Europe and Israel in recent days.” By “in Europe” we mean the Islamist attack on October 16th around the game between Belgium and Sweden in Brussels, where a man shot two Swedish fans.
UEFA – whose members include Israel – remained silent for a long time following the Hamas attack on October 7th. It was only days later that UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin expressed his condolences in a letter to the Israeli association president. There was no official statement from the association; instead, it was announced that all of Israel’s international home games would be moved abroad for security reasons.