The most devoted act of sympathy in the
history of competitive sports, as far as I know, is inscribed in the name of Jeffrey Hoish, a Wales rugby team fan who cut his testicles.
"I told my friend I'm going to cut if Wales beat England," Hoysch said in an interview. "Then I recovered and started cutting. It took ten minutes and the truth was that it hurt quite a bit. But I kept going. The scissors were dull, so I really had to cut them out of the body."
After he finished, Assaf Hoish put his genetic load in the bag, went to the pub, shouted "I did it" and then collapsed. At the hospital, efforts to reconnect the package failed.
"Every day I think about what happened and I still haven't found a good enough reason why I did it," Hoish wondered. "I feel bad. I will not be able to have children but I still want a family. I may adopt." I'm not convinced that the public interest meets Hoyesh's desire to adopt, but anything can happen.
And why did I remember Mr. Hoish? Because one of the editors of the above supplement sent me on WhatsApp the cruel deadline for submitting the column, and on the way suggested that I write about the game this coming Monday between Betar Jerusalem against Hapoel Tel Aviv. The sworn rival.
I did not plan a column on football, and to be honest I did not even know that in the next two teams the teams are playing.
I planned to write a political column.
Maybe about Elazar Stern who entered a minefield despite the "no entry" sign, and instead of a mine detector he brought a hoe with him and dug himself a fine mine to jump on.
But know what, I said to myself, Betar against Hapoel is always symbolic. After all, football is a much more serious matter than the game itself. "A.
Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galliano wrote about a Boca Juniors fan, in Buenos Aires, who all his life hated River Plate, the city's second-largest team.
On his deathbed, tormented by the pains of death, a blue-and-yellow Boca fan asked to be wrapped in the red-and-white flag of his hated rival River so he could celebrate with his last breath - "one more of them died."
I remember telling this to my eldest son who thought it was one of the stupid things he had ever heard in his life. I guess any sensible person would agree with him. But football fans know that through stupidity, pathos and infantilism, a certain truth emerges, and besides, my son did not see Hapoel knocking Betar the 1983 championship on the eve of Lag B'Omer and I did. To this day, I am in post-trauma from the smell of champagne dripping from broken bottles and mingling with police horse urine around the walls of the YMCA. . I am very disappointed with this approach. I can assure you it's much, much more than that. "
Football is an emotionally insane emotional binge. It is essentially much more than an aesthetic urge, a passion for beautiful play, a lust for a sophisticated stripe and a stylish kick. .
When I examine my sympathy for the
group
I feel a strong element of a sense of identity, because without sympathy for Betar I am a different person - for better or for worse. And there is also the elusive matter of emotion. Every fan knows - the butterflies in the stomach just before the opening whistle. The stress, the excitement, the adrenaline flow, an intoxicating feeling that may lie but has no substitute.
On the other hand, in recent years, I also went down the back slope when it came to Betar. Still interested in results, sometimes watching a random game, I will not miss the game with Hapoel, but there were years I would travel to away games as well.
A decade ago, when striker Itai Schechter played for Hapoel Tel Aviv, he wondered, "Why does everyone hate us?" Hapoel Tel Aviv will always be the elite, Israel the first, and Betar Israel the second. The allegory as a group of the other Israel, the screwed-up, black, anti-establishment, mountain people.
Hapoel once symbolized
the hated Mapai establishment, the Histadrut. Today it is identified with the hated media, with cultural arrogance and toxic wit in the stands. In reality, the socio-demographic division is sometimes misleading; There are Ashkenazi fans who vote for Meretz. But Roughly speaking, symbolic, inclusive - against Beitar is the classic rivalries in sports politics in Israel since the 30s of the last century. Right against the Left on the field.
This week fans attended basketball team Hapoel fight with guards after losing to Herzliya. I I guess most of you have not heard of it, and I know that if it was Betar fans it would have opened editions. The subject is already trite and also a bit like Hapoel Tel Aviv's automatic chilblain. For years I was praised on the radio for the double standards of the media when it comes to group coverage.
Betar, due to its clear political identity, has become a rotten damn goat from too much use. Here we declare: there are no saints and angels here, no sons of light and sons of darkness, only selective enforcement.
All we ask of Betar players is only 90 minutes of stubborn heroic fighting, of bulldog jaws locked in cruel rigidity.
Ninety minutes of dripping sweat from blinding eyes, burning lungs and muscles threatening to rupture.
Ninety minutes of dying or conquering the mountain.
Ninety minutes after which the lamp symbol will shine on the chest.
