Melmillian, Nemani or Aboksis at all?
The 8 largest numbers
Spiegel was an artist, the best 50-50 abacus in history, a legendary Stelmach, a sergeant major and a millionaire brand.
The number 8 has always been binding in Israeli football, and it is time for us to review and yours to determine - who was the greatest of them all?
Ron Amikam
11/06/2022
Saturday, June 11, 2022, 3:20 p.m.
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Storm in the Kingdom with Avi Nemani - Part 2 (Sports 1)
The summer of 1972 shook Maccabi Tel Aviv, even though it had won the championship a few weeks earlier.
The star of the team, Giora Spiegel
, who was refused to move to French Nantes, vehemently demanded an international release, even though he had just celebrated his 25th birthday. Football department chairman Jerry Beit Halevi did not think it was time to release him.
Beit Halevi was not moved. He also did not believe that Spiegel would agree to sit idle at home for just a year just to play outside of Israel
. One, after five rounds, just before the post office on Allenby Street in Tel Aviv went out for the weekend, Spiegel came in and sent his quarantine form by airmail. The timing was crazy: the next day, the big Tel Aviv derby took place. That he will not come and deliver in his name that he is in quarantine.
The next day, the spectators were surprised to see Yaron Oz, a 20-year-old soldier, in Spiegel's place, and more than surprised by the sequence of events, they were surprised to see Oz wearing the yellow-black striped shirt (yes, then Maccabi Tel Aviv played yellow-black) with the number 8 on it. It was likened to blasphemy, but it was deliberate.
Spiegel spent a whole year at home, completing his studies and waiting for the end of the season, but even then Beit Halevi did not release, but asked to wait until the year of quarantine ended.
And all that year the number 8 was close to Oz, who completely justified his place, and he is also considered to this day one of the greatest 8 numbers in the history of Israeli football.
More on Walla!
Longing for Time: The 10 Mythological Stadiums of Israeli Football
To the full article
Which one is the biggest of them all (Photo: Image Processing)
Just to close this episode, it should be noted that in 1978 Spiegel finished five most successful years in French football, at the end of which he wore the captaincy of Olympic Lyon and was on the team of the season in the senior French league, alongside Michel Platini.
When he returned to Israel, Oz was still a Maccabi Tel Aviv player, and still wore the No. 8 shirt. Spiegel settled for the No. 11 shirt.
These were the years when the No. 8 shirt was the most important in Israeli football.
Spiegel lost it not only to Maccabi Tel Aviv, but also to the Israeli national team.
The term "number 8" was very prestigious, so much so that it went into fan songs (details below).
There is no rating here, we leave it to you.
Who is the biggest number 8 in the history of Israeli football?
You will determine.
We chose five of our own.
More on Walla!
Longing for Time: The 10 Mythological Stadiums of Israeli Football
Giora Spiegel
Played:
1963-1981
Teams:
Maccabi Tel Aviv, Strasbourg, Lyon, Hakoach, Betar Tel Aviv
Goals in careers in all professional settings:
200
But naturally we will continue with Spiegel and open the top five with him. Some will say that Spiegel is the best player out of the five , A prodigy who reached the first 10 league goals at the age of 17 and a half, who was the top scorer for Maccabi Tel Aviv at the age of 18 and then for 6 seasons in a row. Scored the only goal against Australia in the home game in Ramat Gan, also missed a penalty, and was the one who snatched the ball in the rematch in Sydney, sent it blind from the middle circle to the left wing, and from there Motla Spiegler shot the ticket to the World Cup. The ball that became the only goal of the team in the World Cup, in a 1: 1 draw against Sweden.
Spiegel handled the ball in a way few knew how to handle, he could move almost on foot, then with extraordinary foot agility, get into a slalom between the defenders' legs and launch the ball.
The author of "The Song of Evil", Haim Guri, once wrote of him: "He was said to be lazy, to play nonchalantly, casually. He had a massive physique and a pair of firm legs, but when he wanted very much, he was not faster than him on the pitch."
At Maccabi Tel Aviv he was omnipotent, the golden years of the club from the mid-1960s until his departure for France, were mostly recorded in his name.
He was not a symbol, it was not in his character, but he was an actor on a different scale.
The emblem of Maccabi Tel Aviv was another number 8.
Yossi Aboksis
Played:
1987-2010
Teams:
Hapoel Tel Aviv, Bnei Yehuda, Tzafririm Holon, Betar Jerusalem, Hapoel Tel Aviv, MS Ashdod, Maccabi Jaffa
Goals in career in all professional settings:
70
I assume that Yossi Aboksis is one The only ones in the history of Israeli football to enter the 11 biggest of two teams - Hapoel Tel Aviv and Betar Jerusalem - by virtue of being the best 50/50 connection in the history of the country.
The abacus was a game animal, the kind that is hard to find today.
For him, too, the relative slowness was misleading.
Aboksis was the fastest slow player in Israeli football, because the football he played was touching.
Either he would crack a density using a short double-pass series, or he would shorten the pitch with his knife balls.
One of these landed at the feet of Eyal Berkowitz on the way to the 0: 1 of the Israeli team against Austria, a game that ended in a resounding 0-5.
Aboakis was the card that Shlomo Sharaf pulled out before that game, and there were no doubts: Aboakis would have made the game from behind that gave Berkowitz the keys to the game of his life, to also be an executor and not just a planner.
Abacus played as a back-up midfielder, but would actually make a play.
He is the third-highest cook in the major leagues and one of the greatest penalty shooters in its history, with one offense, which also resulted from slipping.
When he once won a Maltese team with Betar Jerusalem, its English coach said he should play in Serie A, Sporting Lisbon men attached a personal guard to him because they were afraid of him. "A on Chelsea, is his significant leadership moment, and if I may guess - he wanted everyone to return to their positions to maintain the result.
If he had the privilege of launching another knife, to double it.
Nahum Stelmach
Played:
1952-1970
Teams:
Hapoel Petah Tikva, Bnei Yehuda, Hapoel Herzliya
Goals in careers in all professional settings:
221
Patrick Van Leven returned to Maccabi Tel Aviv a custom that was in Israeli football until the mid-60s: play with your position number on your back .
Today, number 8 is a 50/50 tie.
It used to be a right-handed link: a retreating striker, who plays under the central striker, and uses his right foot.
Until his retirement from the national team in 1968, Stelmach was the most significant player of the first two decades in the country: at 16 and 77 days old he scored his first goal in the league;
At 17 and a quarter he reached 10 goals - no one did it faster than him;
He reached 50 league goals after only 64 games, which will also be difficult to break;
At the age of 19 he won his first championship, at the age of 27 in the sixth championship, all in the same team - Hapoel Petach Tikva - the one before and after him failed to recover any of its achievements;
He was for nearly 10 years the overall top scorer of the league (a title held today by Alon Mizrahi), and he was a really huge player.
And I write this without having seen it even once in my life.
There are very few YouTube clips you can relish about Stelmach, his dizzying dribbling speed, dribbling he would do with his back straight, like his precise jab with his forehead, a jab that sometimes looked like a volleyball landing, a loud flick on the ball.
His most famous goal - the equalizer against Lev Yashin and the Soviet Union in 1956 - the cameras failed to pick up, so it will be difficult to prove he was in a different position, but his spectacular goal against Italy, in 1961, on a ticket to the World Cup, can be sought.
Not for nothing was his nickname - "Golden Head".
My father is a member
Played:
1989-2008
Teams:
Maccabi Tel Aviv, Atletico Madrid, Derby County, Betar Jerusalem
Career goals in all professional settings:
250
There is no connection in the history of Israeli football who has scored so many goals as Avi Nemani and it is possible that if he had not gone out twice in his career His for leagues different in his style - La Liga and Premier League - he had more goals and personal titles.
Nemanji is considered a historic and perhaps also hysterical number 8, because he was swept away by the masses, because just as he was revered, so he was hated by his competitors.
His style - an instructive dribble on a small area, with stylish body deceptions, and ruler dedication like precise kicks - made him a unique footballer, mainly because he did it all in a manner that admired as well as irritated antiquity.
When Richard Nielsen went out with the Israeli team for a super important game in Austria, and decided to come up with Nemanji as a striker instead of Alon Mizrahi, he was asked how it was possible, and also replied: "Avi Nemani is more knowledgeable than any other Israeli player."
It was a blasphemy, until in the game itself Israel took a 0: 1 lead in the third minute from a ball sent by Nemanji and became the own goal of the Austrian stopper Bauer.
His control of Maccabi Tel Aviv was absolute. He is considered its biggest symbol, and when it was decided to sift him out of the squad - temporarily in the 2002/3 championship season and final before the start of the 2003/4 season - most of the crowd went with him and started a huge protest against the coach and management. He returned to the team at the end of two years at Betar Jerusalem (also there he became a revered player from the first moment), exactly to the chair he sat on when he left - the "King" chair (Nir Klinger, there, there).
But it was natural that he would get the job of professional manager when he retired.
Uri Melmillian
Played:
1973-1994
Teams:
Betar Jerusalem, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Beer Sheva, Hapoel Kfar Saba
Career goals in all professional settings:
235
There was no football player in Israel whose shirt number became a brand - as well as his name - as Uri Melmillian. It was announced that "every loquat is a millionaire", whose name has been played in every home in Israel since he brought his first degree to Betar Jerusalem in 1976.
His goal - after missing Pendel - was a typical banana kick, from a distance of 35 meters, in the last minutes of extra time in the cup final against Maccabi Tel Aviv.
30,000 Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and 20,000 Betar Jerusalem fans entered this game, leaving 20,000 Maccabi Tel Aviv fans and 30,000 Betar fans.
The 1977 upheaval began that day and was led by a 19-year-old boy from the Mamilla neighborhood, some of the bullets he sent as a child across the border fence are still in the possession of the Jordanian Legion.
"Such is Melmillian," I wrote on another occasion: "humble outside, stormy inside; his gait is slow and his balls are tumultuous; his shirt is in his trousers and his hair is wild; he is modest in his demeanor but demanding in his demands. .
Uri Melmillian was an occupying contact, literally.
He was able to pick up a horn and go for a punch, only luckily for the brakes, he barely poked.
He is one of the few individuals who has finished a season as the king of goals and the king of cooks.
He is the Vice King of Cooks of all time and the most prolific penalist.
His free balls were a craft of thought, as well as his artist dedication, heels, timing, elegance.
Uri ended his career with two yellows at Total, a player who gave respect and received a sea of honor on the field.
Number 8 for all its components.
Number 8 largest
Uri Melmillian
My father is a member
Nahum Stelmach
Giora Spiegel
Yossi Aboksis
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