Footie and Politics

Today I attended the final game of the season of Hapoel Katamon Jerusalem. They play at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem (in Malha, near the train station). My Israeli family are huge fans of Hapoel Katamon -- the only fan-owned team (like Barcelona) in Israel. Hapoel Katamon has played in the third league in Israel since the team was created in 2007. By winning today's final by a sufficient margin (9-1, it was a stinker, the other team barely made it to the pitch, last night it wasn't clear the game was going to happen) the team has secured a promotion to the second league next season. Very exciting!

So here's the stadium...the pictures won't show you that we lined up, well, you know, queued Israeli-styles to try to get a drink at halftime. Okay, Sivan did, I hung back out of the masses. But, no luck - they were all out of drinks. The only thing they seemed to be serving was Coca-Cola from the 2L bottle, no beer available! (As a veteran concession stand worker from my days at Swangard this confounded me. Both that you would pour from a 2L and not push from a fountain and that you could run out of drinks!)

Teddy Stadium -- everyone sits on the shady side!

play on the field, kippa on some men

And pix of some fans...We were sitting standing in the "hardcore fan" section. On our feet the entire time and singing (or in my case, humming) along to the team songs. Oddly, to me, the fans continue to sing while play is on -- continuously. It's a young team, but they have songs enough you'd think they'd been around for 50 years. And everyone knows the songs.

the rowdy section

There is another unique feature to Hapoel Katamon, besides the fan ownership. Fans of Hapoel Katamon include women and children. And, when you go to a game, kids and women (including a safta or two (grandmas)) are even in the crowd. Apparently, most other football games in Israel are characterized by violence -- very aggressive events. I don't have first hand knowledge of this, today was my first footie game in Israel.

It was good fun, that might have been great had the game not been such a rout.

Hapoel Katamon scores, again!

Still celebrating

At the end of the game the fans sing a duet with the players -- it's actually really cool. They clearly adore each other.

My ticket to the match

So, where's the politics? Well, Hapoel Katamon (a neighbourhood in Jerusalem) was created because fans were unhappy with Hapoel Jerusalem. Originally, Hapoel Jerusalem was owned by Israel's organization of workers' unions and stood for socialist values. Their archrival was Beitar Jerusalem -- a team that was (and still is) associated with the right wing. Hapoel Jerusalem fans were disappointed and frustrated with the ownership's antics (not to mention the team's performance) so they bailed and bought into Hapoel Katamon...with hopes that HK will displace HJ sometime soon. Today's victory was a huge step in the right direction.