Football In Israel Research Articles

Choreographed Fan Displays: The Case of Israeli Sports

Choreographed Fan Displays: The Case of Israeli Sports

The Grass is Greener: first steps of professionalism in Israeli football

ABSTRACT During the first decade of the State of Israel (1950s), football was the most popular sport in the country. Yet at the time football in Israel was governed by political interests and was non-professional as well, such that players could not receive any material remuneration and were expected to be loyal to the club and the state. Nevertheless, a few players left their clubs and their country and travelled abroad to play as professionals. This act provoked a harsh response from the media and the Israel Football Association (IFA) and also from politicians from every Zionist organization in Israel. The present paper tells the story of these footballers and the sanctions imposed upon them by the authorities in order to put a stop to this practice, mainly because of its perceived threat to Israeli society as a whole.

The establishment of the Eretz Israel football association

ABSTRACT The Eretz Israel Football Association was established on 14 August 1928 and became an official member of FIFA in May, 1929. The establishment of the Association culminated an extended process including efforts extending throughout the 1920s to institutionalise football in Eretz Israel. This article describes these efforts and the phases of institutionalising football in Eretz Israel in the 1920s; the contribution of the Russians, British, French, and Egyptians; and the rivalry between Hapoel and Maccabi, all of which ultimately contributed to the establishment of the Israel Football Association (IFA).

Contemporary attitudes to women’s football in Israel

ABSTRACT The development in women’s sports in general, and women’s football in particular, has attracted extensive research due to, among other things, the high popularity of football, which functioned as an exclusively male domain for many years. This article examines attitudes towards women’s football in Israel, reflected in readers’ comments to related sport news items. Analysis of the responses to all the items related to women’s football posted in 2019 on sports and news websites, reveals mechanisms of fierce resistance manifested in disparaging and degrading attitudes towards women’s football and all factors involved in this sport. Some commenters emphasised women’s anomalous presence in football by restricting women to roles in the domestic and sexual spheres, while others explained women’s presence on football pitches by obliterating the gendered nature of women’s football, even to the point of equating the women with animals and beasts. Yet others blamed women players for the discrimination they experience on the football pitches, identifying the cause as ‘feminist terror.’

‘I am grateful that god hates the reds’: persistent values and changing trends in Israel football chants

Fans’ chants in sports stadium have, over the years, become an integral part of the spectator experience. While chants add colour, atmosphere and a demonstration of fans’ support for their team, chants also play a significant role in defining fans’ perceptions of their team’s identity and its differentiation from other teams. An analysis of football chants will therefore shed light on fans’ deep-seated worldviews of their own role, their team, the sport in general, and even life itself. The purpose of this study is to find whether and how the content of the chants changed over the years, as a reflection of wider social and cultural changes of the society. Based on an analysis of Israeli football chants over years, the study identifies key changing and stable perceptions of football fans. Findings point to several values that have remained stable over years, including fans’ attitudes toward their team and its rivals, and their attitude toward God, alongside recently emerging phenomena such as radicalization of hatred toward others and attitudes to the commercialization of sport, which reflect social and cultural changes both in the world of sports and without.

The Usual Suspect: A History of Football Violence in the State of Israel

Rather than hooliganism per se, violence here is examined both in its totality and the extent to which the history of football violence in Israel has been subject to a fluctuating social, political and economic context. Initially, footballers were ‘the usual suspect’ as violence was often incited by the players on the pitch. For political reasons, the Israel Football Association (IFA) was practically helpless. Over time, violent incidents on the pitch decreased as a change in the pattern of violence took place. Due to an increasing commodification of Israeli football, players and spectators switched places. The crowd was now ‘the usual suspect’ and later, due to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, ethnicity-nationality became the major trigger for violent actions in Israeli football.

A Sport Physiotherapist as Medical Director: Taking a Leadership Role

According to Wikipedia, a medical director is typically a physician who provides healthcare guidance, leadership,oversight, and quality assurance. The medical director is responsible for creating treatment protocols and providing oversight for all constituents who deliver healthcare services to a particular target population. There are, however, significant variations from country to country regarding the role and responsibilities of the medical director. The author discusses his experience as a sports physiotherapist in the medical director position for the Israel Football Association.

From community to commodity: the commodification of football in Israel

This paper chronicles the process of football’s commodification in Israel. The contours of the football story in Israel were sketched by the dominant society. In 1948, the year the State of Israel was established, football was a political–community project. The local club was controlled by the club’s members and by the specific sports federation (there were three state-wide political federations), which was affiliated with a particular political party in Israel. Many of the fans, who were also members of the club, were involved in electing the club’s management. This correlation between politics and football was natural at that time because during the first decades of the State, politics was the dominant force in Israeli society. In the late 1980s, when Israel became a capitalist society and the dominant force in society shifted from politics to the economy, football’s status changed; clubs of the first and the second leagues were privatized, players were purchased and sold by their exchange value, and many fans turned into customers. Israeli football eventually became commodified.

Six decades of sport, from a game to commodity: football as a parable

As in most other states in the world, football was and still is the most popular sport in Israel. This essay portrays the development of football as a parable of other sports in Israel. It is suggested that football's history is epitomized by the process in which a game was transferred into commodity: football in Israel in the first decades after statehood was controlled by politics. In the 1980s and onward football became increasingly commercial. In fact, the story of football reflects in general the story of Israeli society. Other sports followed suit, however to a lesser extent. In the 1950s sports were supported and maintained by political organizations. In the 1990s they became dependent – some more than others – on capital, that is, the commercial market. At the threshold of the twenty-first century Israeli football seemed quite ready to join the mainstream of world football: to become a commodity in a competitive market.

Split Loyalty: Football‐cum‐Nationality in Israel

This essay considers a shift in the loyalty of Israeli football supporters, from the uncontested primacy afforded to the national team, to split loyalties expressed through a concrete conflict between loyalty to the local club and loyalty to the national side. This shift is related directly to the transformation of the Israeli society, which increasingly has undergone change, moving towards a more capitalist‐oriented society. Football in Israel has been commodified, which in turn has transformed the game for the clubs, the players and the fans. Consequently, in the 1990s, fans faced a situation in which their loyalty to the national side was threatened by a clash with their loyalty to their club, a paradox that remains unresolved.

Arab football in Israel as an 'integrative enclave'

Over the last two decades, football (soccer) has become a major institution within the popular culture of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. The centrality of football has given different identity agents opportunities to impose different meanings on the sport, depending on the agents' definitions of collective identity. This article utilizes ethnographic observation in the football stadium and coverage by Arab and Hebrew sports media to illustrate and analyse this battle over meaning. The Hebrew sports media, the Arab sports press, and the Arab audience are three different agents that attach divergent meanings to the notable presence of Arab players in the Israeli football leagues. The article argues that the overlapping interests of the Hebrew sports media on the one hand and the Arab football fans, players, and bureaucrats on the other lead to the construction of the football sphere as an integrative enclave in the general Israeli public sphere. The article considers the relevance of Gramsci's theory of hegemony to explain the production of the integrative meaning of football, and it suggests integrating this explanation with other recent theories regarding the tensions between different discourses of citizenship.

THE COMMODIFICATION OF FOOTBALL IN ISRAEL

It is argued that commodification is the major process determining the social development of sport in modern capitalist societies. In this light, the development of football in Israel from state-hood to the present is described. Two types of sport — `political' and `commodity' — are used to delineate this development. It is proposed that the commodification of football needs to be analyzed at both the club and the player levels. Commodification has been much more pronounced at the player level, while the club level is specified as a hybrid type responding to both political and market rules. It is concluded that the history of football in Israel is that of a transformation from a game into a commodity via politics.

Judicial Review and Domestic Tribunals: Bnei-Yehuda T.A. v. Israel Football Association and Others (1971) (II) 25 P.D. 413

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