Israel's Most Politically Charged Football Rivalry
Coby asks how Israeli footballers are faring on the European stage.
Football means a huge amount to me, as it does to billions of people around the world. I've been lucky enough to watch it at every level, from AFCON to a Serbian third-division derby, from Messi scoring a brace for Inter Miami to going to watch the worst national team in the world (yes, on purpose), and, of course, weekly with Bury. But on the recent Bogrim trip to Israel, something I never saw coming happened as I ticked off my fourth continent and fifteenth game abroad.
Football isn't by far the most popular sport in Israel like it is in other places, with basketball a very close second, so I was desperate to see how the Israeli Premier League would look in person. Hapoel Tel Aviv and Beitar Jerusalem aren't exactly Champions League regulars, but they do share one of the biggest rivalries in the country, and it's a political one. Hapoel has historically been the club of the Labour movement. Beitar sits at the opposite end of the spectrum, with a set of ultras who are far-right hooligans, and that's putting it politely. The Guardian has famously dubbed them “the most racist football team in the world", which is quite the achievement in a competitive field.
We got our tickets through “off-the-record methods" (text me for the full scoop, it's a good one). We ended up with a couple of spares, and after two hours of trying to give away free tickets to people we knew in Israel, we finally picked up two random Americans outside the ground.
Within minutes of arriving, the Hapoel fans unveiled a genuinely brilliant tifo. The smoke from it was so good that it delayed kick-off, which contrasts with the games I regularly attend, where getting in a bottle cap is a nightmare. When the game did finally start, Hapoel let off fireworks from the stands, which the Beitar ultras greeted with jeers. Both sets of fans sang brilliantly for the full 90 minutes. We were sitting nearer the Beitar end, so they occasionally gave it large in our direction.
The opener came from a lovely run into the box by Alkuin, set up by a beautifully placed pass. There was action all through the rest of the first half, but no end product, as open goals kept being missed by Ghanaian Boateng. The last act of the half was an effort from range by Beitar's number 40, Boris Enow, which was just wide.
The second half kicked off feistily when Beitar's Georgian centre-back Gadrani was sent off for denying a goal-scoring opportunity. After a lengthy VAR check, his yellow was upgraded to a red. Things went quiet until Hapoel made it 2-0 in the 73rd minute, and Israeli international Dappa sealed it in the 82nd. FT: 3-0.
At the final whistle, the Beitar players went over to applaud their travelling fans, and were met with boos, vile abuse and objects being thrown at them. I've seen some things at football grounds, but I'd never seen a set of fans turn on their own team like that. Watching the way they treated their own players really gave me a sense of how disgusting the Beitar fans are. My opinion of them did not improve outside the stadium, as both sets of fans looked up for a fight, while Charlie and I just wanted to find a pub.
The genuinely unexpected thing is that this was the best game I've ever been to abroad, and I've seen some brilliant ones. It was in Israel, of all places, and the standard of the football wasn't even the reason. Two brilliantly (for the most part) passionate ultra groups, a delayed kick-off, a red card and a set of fans who bullied their own team: what more could you want from a humid Thursday night in Tel Aviv?
