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Kol Nadri: The writers of "Israel Hayom" choose their major sports broadcasters Israel today

2022-10-03T18:07:27.650Z


For the fans, the sports broadcasts have always been much more than a means of describing what is happening on the field • The intonation, the choice of words, the extreme knowledge, the brilliant sentences and the authenticity - all these made them an inseparable part of moments that everyone keeps in their memory • Their voices - our excitement


A league of its own

Adi Rubinstein on miracles I hoped

It is difficult to define Nissim Kivi only as a sports broadcaster.

He was beyond that: he was a sports pundit when the internet was still science fiction, he was a journalist, a huge radio broadcaster but also an excellent TV broadcaster, and above all he had - and still does, so it is said - a great deal of style.

For everyone I was hoping for miracles, of course first of all football.

There is no old Israeli sports fan who cannot recite by heart the broadcast of Eli Ohana's huge goal in Australia - perhaps the greatest goal of the Israeli national team in those days.

I hoped he had learned to broadcast football in England and brought from there the right combination of enthusiasm and that elusive restraint that has disappeared from our sports broadcasts.

Wired, photo: Moshe Shay

But my hope was first of all a broadcaster of the Olympic disciplines.

He combined vast knowledge in subjects such as athletics and swimming, in an era when Israel was cut off from world sports most of the time.

He combined this with a tremendous understanding of the medium called television.

Once watched on YouTube the way he delivered the swimming broadcasts in the damn Olympics in Munich.

The athlete-to-athlete close-up camera then came into use for the first time, and I hoped, coming from a country that was hugely behind the rest of the world in television, he immediately fitted in: he described the body of swimmer Mark Spitz, as the camera panned over him, and immediately predicted that he was going to be the big hero of the ointment.

Spitz became the great sporting hero of the games.

Yes, he had profanity for the most part, his voice was not radiophonic enough and he was not able to enter into the pantheon one mythological sentence that was burned into the mind.

But in the end, Nissim Kivithi managed to remain unique in the landscape of Israeli sports broadcasts.

While the older generation was fighting among themselves for the premiership, while the younger generation was already breathing down their necks, I hoped it was and will remain a league of its own.

like a machine gun |

Amnon Lord on Nehemiah ben Avraham

I don't know what Golda Meir understood about football, but she was certainly observed and photographed in a prominent place in the stands, together with Knesset Speaker Yosef Shprincek and ministers in the government. It was at the most important football game in the country up to that time between Israel and the USSR, in July 1956. Above one The wings of the municipal stadium in Ramat Gan hung the slogan "Body culture - a guarantee for the health of the people".

The representative sport was politics mixed with a national display, and the one who translated all of this into a catchy and even inspiring event was Nehemiah ben Avraham.

Ben Avraham, photo: Moshe Friedan

Nehemiah's voice, as we called him, from the "urban stadium in Ramat Gan", was part of the Israeliness of the 1950s and 1960s, like Ben-Gurion's voice, like a dish of falafel and like a company of soldiers from the 12th Brigade in an IDF parade.

Nehemiah also broadcast the mirages, according to my account.

"According to my calculations, there are more left...", "According to my calculations, Manchel will kick a free kick from a distance of 35 meters", "And the microphone to the crowd!... I pass the microphone to the crowd!", "Looking for someone to hand to...", "Glaser With a quick dribble...", "The ball is in their face!... No".

These are just some of the typical pearls without which a Nehemiah football broadcast is impossible.

It's hard to describe the disappointment when sometimes it turned out that some important international game would only be broadcast from the second half.

And this even though we didn't know what the scene on the field looked like at all and we only imagined it courtesy of Nehemiah ben Avraham.

And then suddenly not only are you satisfied with the second half only, but someone else broadcasts - Nissim Kivithi or Ami Paztal (with all due respect).

It wasn't exactly blasphemy, but as if Kaddish Luz was suddenly brought in to play the role of Ben-Gurion.

Part of the matter was the unequivocal mention that the game with Yugoslavia or Poland or Greece, or the devil knows which country, was held at the "City Stadium in Ramat Gan".

A game in Haifa, Kiryat Eliezer, or the stadium in Kiryat Haim or Petah Tikva seems to be something inferior.

Unlawful assembly.

The Ramat Gan stadium in those glorious days, when a 2:1 loss to the USSR was considered a victory (because it was an honorable loss), held about 50,000 seats. Half of the country flocked to certain games and the rest clung to the radio receivers to hear Nehemiah ben Avraham. His slightly rough voice, a little high, at the rate of a machine gun with a silencer, painted everything in blue and white for us.

Inside the dream box

Uri Dagon on Meir Einstein

First picture:

A boy walks in the Galilee fields on Saturday afternoon, to find a reception point for the small transistor he held in his hand, and when the opening music of "Shirim and Sha'ir" came, he entered the world of imagination.

In this world, Meir Einstein was the hero who sat in Kiryat Eliezer, Bloomfield or YMCA and made what was heard visible.

The decibels in the broadcast, the passion, the love for what he sees and does have turned the small radio into an imaginary device where a game between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel BS sounds like Liverpool against United.

Even when he moved to broadcasting on the screen, a place where reality leaves no doubt, Einstein made the television broadcasting experience imaginary with the emotions and strengths he brought with him from the radio.

Einstein, photo: Ami Shoman

Second photo:

October 1993, a paratrooper at the Ras Biadah base in Lebanon, engineer a double guard to see the team against France.

"The referee glanced at the clock but still didn't put the whistle in his mouth, here is Reuven Atar... in the Parc de France in Paris... what a beauty... Ronnie is free... Ronen Harazi signals to him... still Rosenthal, look at his break, You have to get the ball out... and it came to Atar... and a goal... a goal!... 3-2 for Israel."

And Meir did not calm down, he lost his voice in ecstasy that gripped everyone who witnessed the event.

Everyone who heard him felt that Einstein was with him, transmitting to him, touching him, as no other transmitter could.

He took reality and preserved it inside the dream box of every sports fan, of every person who has emotions and feelings.

He is the greatest of all for me, because he was the soundtrack of my life since childhood, he made dreams come true and filled my imagination, he made me love, be angry, be happy and be the most miserable man.

On the few occasions when I edited the program "Shabbat Bisiyeh", as a deputy, when Einstein would come to the yeshiva before broadcasting and turn with his mane of hair and Einstein's voice, everything in my head would stop for a second - imagination and reality were mixed, the editor I was back to being the child, the boy, the soldier Meir was the imaginary friend His.

Maybe they were better than Einstein, but none of them made a child's dreams come true like he did.

Radio Days

Eyal Levy on Hanoch Kenan

The 1970s, Saturday, it's a little before two in the afternoon.

A family sits down in a Tel Aviv neighborhood for a festive meal.

The father passes the bowl of rice to his daughter, the mother is just serving the chicken to the table, and on the nearby sofa lies a 13-year-old boy snoring.

He is pale, weak.

A doctor would claim that his days are numbered and it's only a matter of time, but no one at home is really excited.

get used to it

Kenan, photo: Ariel Kreiderman

Football sick, that's what I was.

Minutes before the program "Songs and Gates" was to go on air, I started having symptoms of rapid death.

The cough, the tremors.

In the news before me, convulsions and faint pleas for help had already arrived.

My mother would look up from the plate and ask "Do you need anything?", but I would not be able to answer.

I was in a world that was all bad.

The tension was tearing me apart.

And then the opening melody of the show that only made it worse.

If I had been connected to the devices, this would probably have been the stage where they would have chosen to have her in her condition.

If Ami Paztal, who was sitting in the studio, was in a hurry to move to Bloomfield, that would be the end, definitely the end.

There are no survivors.

I remember the sharp transitions to Hanoch Kenan, at the broadcasting station, in Jaffa.

Kenan had a metallic, almost inhuman voice.

The sound of a scalpel cutting through flesh.

Every time the enemy entered the square I would feel my nerves exposed.

Each removal from the goal line cost me several years.

By Keenan's voice I was able to imagine where each player was positioned in the defense, which side of gate 7 the popsicle seller was now and if he had any tropicals left in the box.

I knew the direction of the wind and I smelled the kebabs that the sellers were preparing in the parking lot.

It wasn't just football for me, it was life.

A goal to our credit and shouts went up in the building, the neighbor thought that this time something really happened.

if we absorb?

The tears would flood the face, the lump would rise in the throat.

Thank you for being with me, you have been very kind to me in my short life.

At the final whistle they would scratch me like after Golani's beret campaign.

Sweating, suffering from stress fractures, but it's a fact that I survived to tell, and what's amazing is that the next day I would wake up like new and pray that Saturday would already come.

what do we have, derby?

Easy, easy, we'll unpack them.  

"There are two types of people in the world - those who do the work, and those who take the credit. Try to be in the front row, it's less crowded there," wrote the Indian politician Indira Gandhi, years before Miri Nebo held a microphone for the first time.

One third of the Mango band landed on the sports channel into a masculine, conservative and square world.

She began to broadcast in remote hours, in branches that no one was interested in, at a time when it seemed that a woman would not lead major sports broadcasters, certainly not broadcast them.

But Nebo, a retired artistic gymnast herself, armed with fighting spirit, determination and ambition, took to the courts and made a little history.

She became the first Israeli to broadcast live from a sporting event, and in 2012 broadcast gymnastics competitions from the London Olympics for the first time.

Four years later came bingo.

Miri Nebo, photo: Coco

In 2016, Nebo, who lived in Brazil and speaks Portuguese as her mother tongue, flew to Rio de Janeiro as the main broadcaster.

Jordan Jarbi's long-awaited medal in judo took the edge off Nebo.

"There's a medal!"

Shaga, happy for Jarbi, happy like all the people of Israel, proud of herself for her personal achievement.

The second medal in the same Olympics, Uri Sasson's, was also won by Nevo Shedar, making her personal victory a double.

Masses of Israeli women will never forget the moment when one woman announced the victory of another woman.

Nebo positioned herself in that Olympics as a professional broadcaster, a journalist who comes prepared to every day of competitions, and at the same time as an Israeli woman, humane and authentic, one who breaks down in tears after winning medals.

Nebo's personal point of view, which broadcast with great enthusiasm the competitions in which Israeli athletes participated, created for her the image of a groupie.

"My soul was tied to her soul," she said of Jarbi, whom she knows like the back of her hand.

Sometimes the truth is the best option.

Today everyone is already there, exactly in this place of expressing a personal opinion, dramatic at times, loaded with frankness, decorated with flowers of sincerity and fiery authenticity, but when Nebo was first there they looked at her with a crooked eye and called her a sympathizer.

Too bad.

She was just ahead of the convoy.

The gold medal of the Viennese Linui Ashram at the Tokyo Olympics, in the discipline in which Nevo began her career, was a symbolic closing of the circle.

When Ashram won the medal, Nevo got out of her way.

"Linoy! I can't believe I'm saying this, Linoy Ashram is an Olympic champion in Tokyo 2020, what a great gymnast!"

Nevo trembled with excitement.

A huge moment of Linoi Ashram, another highlight of the broadcaster.

Nebo, a feminist in practice, proved that reality can be changed.

Not with slogans, but with daily, Sisyphean work, with huge investment and true love for the profession.

Conclusion: Do you want to broadcast?

Take the microphone and start.

with much ceremony

Omri Livna on Yoram Arbel

Every football or basketball fan, especially those over the age of 40, has his Yoram Arbel moments.

There is no shortage of examples, but even before the unforgettable quotes, Barbel had - in my eyes, as a child in the 80's - something beyond that.

Arbel, with the baritone voice and the instinct to say the right thing at the right time, always knew how to add the shine that turns a course of sports into something with added value.

It was associated with me from the first hearing (at the 1982 World Cup with the legendary Paolo Rossi) in unforgettable moments, those that make you, the lone fan, a part of something big that you share with thousands more.

In my eyes, he was the real thing, the one who takes you hand in hand into the field.

with much ceremony. 

Arbel, photo: Yaakov Sa'ar-L.A.M

If we put aside for a moment the World Cups and the European Championships, a direct broadcast (or "live and direct", as it was customary to say at the time) of Israeli football was a special event in the early 1980s.

In this day and age, there is almost no game that you can't watch in real time (especially if you pay), but in those days, when the opening signal for a live broadcast of the national team or any match in the State Cup began to play on the television, and the camera would move past the full stands in Ramat Gan Stadium, a feeling of A special, festive event.

In those seconds I would wait for the broadcaster to open the microphone to know with whom we would spend the next two hours, and hope to hear Arbel so that the celebration would be perfect.

When he broadcast, I felt we got the top, no compromises.

Last June, Arbel celebrated his 80th birthday, and a (too) large part of the interviews with him dealt with mistakes that occasionally occur to him on the air, especially since the 2014 World Cup. The importance of the phenomenon should not be underestimated, and it is clear that a broadcaster must be professional and knowledgeable in the details, but it is sad to see the decline in Arbel's horn, which is still can contribute from his charm and experience.

The heart is a little saddened to know that in the upcoming World Cup we will not hear him, because in my opinion he is still the preferred voice, especially in big games, where the viewer needs a broadcaster who brings with him added value beyond pouring out statistics and trivia data.

In any case, whatever the stage on which Arbel will continue to broadcast - a Spanish league or a game from Kiryat Shmona - his great moments cannot be forgotten.

And while everyone remembers "That's not how you build a wall", for me it will always be "sensation de la sensation" and "everything shakes here".

To a man from the settlement, the name John Motson does not sound familiar, but in the late 1990s his voice moved the time of quite a few children and teenagers, after the veteran BBC broadcaster was chosen to lead the "broadcasts" of the legendary "FIFA" computer game.

Motson broadcast more than two hundred matches of the Premier League and the England national team, and it was not for nothing that he was chosen to serve as the voice that accompanied an entire generation, even before the beloved game moved to other and much more innovative formats.

For a "former player" like me, who spent hours in front of the computer trying to subdue big players from the opposing teams, it seemed that Motson, who was recorded for the game for many months, was excited about every goal that was scored, as if it happened in reality and not through the computer screen.

He always declared every move "brilliant" and in a heavy British accent moved us when he added "Wow, what a goal!"

Motson was part of the magic that accompanied all the long hours, and when another broadcaster was "inserted" into the game there was always a kind of feeling of being missed, as if the game would not be the same.

For me, and I assume that for quite a few other children, Motson was a significant part of the game experience, which at the time crossed borders and genders.

Who but Dennis Bergkamp, ​​a childhood star, appeared on the cover of "FIFA 98".

I opened the package with reverence, started playing, and heard for the first time this evening, the voice, so calm and excited, of Mr. British Football.

Although it is apparently only a computer game, Motson represented much more to me.

He made me fall in love with the game of ball even more.

As a Hapoel fan who knows quite a few difficult times, I occasionally allow myself to imagine his voice broadcasting to me another difficult game in Bloomfield.

Who knows, maybe with him we will finally get to hear "what a goal!".

An island of urban stability

Omar Lahmanovitz on Motti Rosenblum

In the early 1990s, the local channel of Rishon Lezion was ESPN for the neighborhood kids in the center of the old city.

The regional cable provider, "Shades", broadcast live the games of Maccabi Rishon LeZion - the relative newcomer to the national league (before it became the "Super League") - which within a few years became a powerhouse that absorbed Mickey-Mooty and foreigners committed to the yellow uniforms of " Clal Insurance".

In those pioneering days, she played first in the Gan Nahum hall, in the shadow of a huge Tschovoy sign behind the basket, and in the battles against Maccabi Tel Aviv, dozens of plastic crown chairs were crammed in to use every bit of free space in the hall.

What accompanied these happy childhood days was the voice of Motty Rosenblum.

As a decorated sports journalist, who bombarded scoops in the powerful "Maariv" of the 1970s and 1980s, Rosenblum was for the young Maccabi Rishon just as much as Berkovic, Maroasti and Mjamchi - a reputable acquisition from the national level, who came to contribute from his experience in the wine city. 

Rosenblum, photo: courtesy of the family

Rosenblum broadcast all the big and small moments of that first day, including the sweep over Hapoel Tel Aviv and the final series against Maccabi Tel Aviv in 1991, the powerful dunks of the late Andre Spencer and the high-profile arrival of the late Kevin Magee, which ended in heartbreak and with a big hole In the club's budget. Rosenblum's monotonous tone on the air might not have survived today, where going out of proportion and excessive superlatives are the name of the game, but in those days, as young sports consumers, he was an island of stability, a familiar anchor for those trying to prove themselves on the court of the greats. Along with the live broadcasts, Rosenblum also hosted a weekly talk show, "Sportshow", which was an hour of pleasure for the basketball rats of the lowlife.

Maccabi Rishon has changed since the happy days of the early nineties.

Last season it was even relegated, and the current season will be spent fighting against Ma'ale Adumim and Elizur Shomron.

Moti Rosenblum continued in the media in other positions, and in the last decade he served as the CEO of the Press Council - until his sudden death, at the age of 75, in May of last year. However, his voice did not die: not only in the archive clips of Maccabi Rishon on YouTube, but also in the heads of hundreds Fans who miss that team and its exciting broadcasts on the local channel.

were we wrong

We will fix it!

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Source: israelhayom

All sports articles on 2022-10-03

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