I will never see anyone like him.
Rafi Eliyahu (photo: official website, the official website of Hapoel Beer Sheva)
its sad.
Very sad.
That fatal accident on that cursed Sabbath four and a half years ago, left Rafi Eliyahu no chance.
Who thought Rafi Eliyahu could get injured?
die?
I thought he would live to the age of 120. What 120. To the age of 200. His heart was made of iron.
Rafi Eliyahu, the Eternal 11, my childhood idol.
The footballer I liked the most.
I was a child when he took Hapoel Beer Sheva to the first championship.
And after that to the second championship.
natural left leg.
I also had a left foot.
I dreamed of being Rafi Eliyahu.
Me and tens of thousands of other children in Beer Sheva in the seventies.
Until his last day, Rafi played football.
Until the age of 67. Until that Saturday morning when he finished the old guys game and went to fill Winner.
An ambulance driver hit his car with tremendous force.
Actually an ambulance.
At the Soroka hospital, where I visited his bed until they transferred him to lie down in Tel Aviv, they said that they were sure that he was even injured in the attack.
The intensity of the impact was so strong that a loud noise was heard near the hospital.
My life revolved around Rafi Eliyahu.
At school I wrote his name on my desk - "Hapoel Be'er Sheva Alupa. Rafi Eliyahu 11".
Finally, a story about Rafi Eliyahu.
When he was 60 years old, I saw him walking near the Maccabi Beer Sheva training ground.
I called him to tell the boys I coached on the grass about him.
He told me: "Leave it, stories. Put your keeper at the gate."
At the age of 60, in daily leisure shoes, Rafi Eliyahu stuck ball after ball into the connections.
Easily put goal after goal and all the kids couldn't take their eyes off him.
Just like my eyes that looked at him 40 years earlier on the field of Hapoel Be'er Sheva.
The eyes of a child who knew he was seeing his childhood hero but didn't know he would never see someone like Rafi Eliyahu again.
sport
Israeli soccer
Super League
Tags
Rafi Eliyahu
