Lebanese footballer returns to coach after coma from Israeli airstrike
Lebanese footballer Celine Haidar is rebuilding her life after surviving an Israeli air strike on Beirut that left her in a coma and partially paralysed. A former Lebanon national team player, she is now 21 and has returned to the pitch, this time as a coach working with young footballers rather than as a player herself.
The strike’s aftermath did not end her connection to the game. Despite injuries serious enough to put her in a coma and leave her only partly able to move as before, Haidar has gone back onto the field to train others. Coaching has become the way she stays in football while she recovers and reconstructs daily life around what the attack took from her.
Her stance is explicit: she will not give up on her dreams. For an international reader, the story is both personal and tied to the war’s reach into civilian sport in Lebanon. Haidar’s name now stands for a national-team athlete who survived bombardment in Beirut, woke from a coma, lives with partial paralysis, and still chooses to teach the next generation of players on the same pitch she once played on.
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