A day after he had turned 43, Lior Asulin was celebrating at a rave party in the southern Israeli Kibbutz Re'im near the Gaza Strip when Hamas terrorists crossed into Israeli territory and killed many people in a massacre. The body of the former football star was among the victims.

"It is with great sadness that we learned, after many hours during which he was considered missing, that our former player Lior Asulin was murdered by terrorists at the party in Re'im," his former club, Hapoel Tel Aviv said in a statement.

On Saturday, according to Israeli sources, up to 1,000 Hamas militants entered Israel, killing several hundred people and taking numerous hostages. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by declaring a state of war.

History maker

In 2004, Asulin made history as part of the first Arab team, Bnei Sakhnin FC, to win a major title in Israel. The Jewish striker scored a brace in the final to bring the Israel State Cup to Sakhnin, a small town in the north of the country. After the final whistle, he celebrated with an Israeli flag while an Arab teammate waved the flag of the Palestinian territories.

Nomadic career

Asulin subsequently received offers from several European clubs, including Olympique Marseille and OGC Nice of France, but he never moved abroad. Instead, the striker played out the rest of his career in Israel, changing clubs almost every year from 2007 onwards. Wherever he played, Asulin quickly became a fan favorite. After his playing career ended in 2017, Asulin temporarily struggled, serving a prison sentence for drug trafficking from December 2021 to September 2022.

Asulin was "a guy with a heart of gold," said his former coach at Sakhnin, Eyal Lachman. "Even when he made mistakes, he always wanted to correct them. And he always did."

This article was originally published in German.