Despite a constant thirst to get the approval of the opponents from the center on their quality mark, the Greens are still immersed in papers from the past • Opinion
The violence in the Haifa derby, last night in Sami Ofer
Photography:
Maor Alexelsi
One hundred kilometers from the city of Tel Aviv lies the State of Haifa. Although the sports media in Carmel very often likes to use the term 'State of Tel Aviv', which hides a kind of subdued anger, perhaps even relentless jealousy of the locomotive, the Haifa derby events miss Haifa. To the shtetl model of yesteryear.
After almost 20 years of total rule in the city, apart from a brief hiatus in the days of Ruby Shapira, the Maccabi Haifa of the last decade did not lose its urban hegemony, but lost it.
It is not that Hapoel Haifa took advantage of the situation to become the creators, but a crash from the status of an empire was enough for Hapoel to succeed in tailing and also to produce a continuous series of successes and victories.
It is not that a new order has been reached in Haifa, but an understanding has been reached that as long as Maccabi does not get out of its prolonged whirlpool, tools must be used to interfere and steal horses.
The oil that drives the particle accelerator that also affected the explosion at the end of the derby is the media in Haifa.
The newspapers, the radio and especially the journalists, whose interpretation is not only their art, but stems mainly from their sympathy for which of the two.
They do almost everything in the studios to burn and light the area.
On the other hand, in Tel Aviv, which has huge clubs with high ratings and fans such as Maccabi and Hapoel, both Leg and Basket, including Bnei Yehuda, there is no such thing as local media.
The agenda of the regional sports programs in Tel Aviv and Greater Tel Aviv is completely national and relevant, compared to the guys in Haifa who are busy 90 percent of the time with what is happening to them.
These are guys who are football-sick, passionate, committed to the goal, but obsessive and those who are willing to spend whole hours in a fruitless discussion, and agree that when they say 'Maccabi', it is clear that this is Maccabi Haifa.
They mostly see see their own hump and have a hard time looking beyond the mountains of darkness.
For decades, I used to sit permanently in the media stand in Kiryat Eliezer.
I loved getting there because Maccabi Haifa was the best show in the city and in Israel, and naturally the focus of events revolved around it.
And yet, even though their team was the best and most successful, in all my arrival - I felt that the fans there, and often the Haifa journalists as well, were thirsty to receive from me the same external approval for their quality mark.
The commotion in Sami Ofer could for a long time take away part of the core of Maccabi Haifa's squad.
If the guys there lose the championship to Maccabi Tel Aviv, they will remember where they were sown and with whom the seeds of calamity were sown.