Football tourism – Israel

Due to a work trip I had to miss the away draw at YB, so no report on that game.

Luckily my trip to Israel co-incided with two of their biggest club games – the Hapoel-Maccabi Tel Aviv derby and Haifa-Juventus in the Champions League.

Hapoel Tel Aviv – Maccabi Tel Aviv

The two clubs share the Bloomfield stadium in the south of Tel Aviv but since this game was a Hapoel Home game the majority of the fans were in red. Fantastic atmosphere in the ground with both sets of fans singing constantly . Clearly a huge rivalry but not overly aggressive. The quality of football was excellent, high tempo and very good passing. I think that either of these teams would have a very good chance of winning the Swiss league. Although Maccabi played well and had a lot of posession Hapoel created the most dangerous chances and won the game with 1-0.

Maccabi Haifa – Juventus

Second game was a late 21.45 kick off between Maccabi Haifa and Juventus. Haifa had lost all their previous group games in a very tough group (Bayern, Bordeaux and Juventus) though they could easily have drawn away against a very average Juventus.

Since UEFA think they know what is best for the fans this game had to be played in Tel Aviv’s national stadium in Ramat Gan. This since the Haifa ground does not please Mr Blatter, Platini and the other politrucks.

There were a few hundred Juve fans present, seemed like a mix of the local Israeli Juventus fan club and some traveling support. Haifa is the best team in Israel but after Juventus scoring just before half time the game could really only have one winner. Juventus closing the game down in a way only Italians seems to be able to do.

Although the fans were far from the pitch the atmosphere was pretty good. One of the best things in Israel is that once the singing starts the whole stadium joins in, not just a small section behind a goal.