The last part of Maccabi Haifa's journey to the group stage of the Champions League will begin on Tuesday evening in the tunnel.
Even 90 minutes before the return match against Red Star Belgrade, maybe 120 minutes, Barak Becher's players will have to march along the length of the players' tunnel at the Maracana Stadium in Belgrade, 239 meters, all of which aim to stress the visiting team before going to the battlefield on the grass.
This tunnel is the longest in European football, and according to many, also the most frightening and threatening.
It's a journey of something like a minute.
There are quite a few videos on the Internet documenting this road, which is much more reminiscent of a bunker from the First World War than the polished players' corridors in modern stadiums around the world.
The infamous tunnel is made of rounded concrete walls lit by fluorescent lamps every few meters.
On the walls there are endless graffiti scrawls in red, black and white, and in the last part armed policemen are arranged in a row which add more pressure to the stressful event from the beginning.
The further you go, the louder the echoes of the explosions and the cheers emanating from the stands.
Towards the end, the journey takes a sharp turn to the left, to a small, dark staircase that leads to another long, dark corridor filled with graffiti and armed police.
Then, when this journey is over, the Maccabi Haifa players will go out to something no less scary - the 55 thousand fans of the Red Star in Belgrade.
The fear at the end of the lighthouse, photo: AFP
Napoli players will have to walk down this tunnel onto Red Star Belgrade's ground, Rajko Mitić Stadium, tomorrow in their UCL group stage opener.
This is no joke....👀🤭 pic.twitter.com/6hDjEgCFR2
— Matt Santangelo (@Matt_Santangelo) September 17, 2018
Thunder and lightning
"To this day I think it's the most stressful football stadium I've ever played in," said Eli McQuist, a former Rangers player, last year.
Although McCoist played there in the 1990/1991 season, when Red Star was crowned European champion, but the memory of that game is engraved in him to this day.
"I'll never forget walking through their tunnel. It's really a scary thing if you let it scare you."
Over the years, many players and coaches have "let" this tunnel and stadium scare them.
Red Star Belgrade won quite a few games thanks to the home atmosphere generated by its crowd, including a 2:0 against Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool in the group stage of the Champions League in 2018.
"There was an amazing football atmosphere here," the German coach summed up the unique experience, "we have no idea what their fans were singing, but there is no doubt that it was extremely loud."
Klopp.
Remembers the Serbian audience well, photo: Reuters
The noise of the Red Star fans mixes quite a bit of politics into it - for example, support for Russia and its recent invasion of Ukraine, alongside racism that has cost its fans many expulsions and suspensions in recent years.
When Tottenham visited Red Star's Maracana in 2019, their coach Mauricio Pochettino feared that the violent incidents in London would repeat themselves and said: "We have to trust UEFA to protect us, we must not go there when we are afraid that something will happen to us." This Tottenham went through the tunnel, went up to the grass and won 0:4.
Beating Red Star in Belgrade is not something that happens every day, and certainly not recently.
In its last five games at home, Dejan Stankovic's team won five times with a total goal difference of 0:24, while from November 2019 they lost at home in all competitions only once.
However, as anyone who has been there can understand, the secret is in the tunnel.
To get onto the grass without fear, Maccabi Haifa must get rid of it along the 239 meters that lead to the noisy and stressful stadium of Red Star Belgrade.
Will Maccabi Haifa cross the hurdle?, Photo: Alan Shiver
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