All the goals from the semifinals of the promotion playoff for Euro 2024/Sport1
Personal confession: I believed that the Israeli team would beat Iceland, just because of tradition.
And the "tradition" cliché says that the Israeli national team, more than being weak, likes to make its fans miserable.
Therefore, the inevitable conclusion was that we would beat the Icelanders, go to the last game (the famous playoff final), prepare for the decisive game, create a crazy carnival, and only then, when everyone was full of hope and faith, only then was the team supposed to lose and break our hearts.
Because this is the expectation of a longtime fan of the national team: discrimination and heartbreak, the only question is the timing.
But the Israeli national team, still our favorite, knows how to surprise.
She has the special ability to create a sense of sensation around her, even in the grayest events.
This was supposed to be only the first course towards the real thing - a loss in the final - and yet our talented guys found a way to heat up the atmosphere, and make the audience feel that here, now we experienced the greatest humiliation of all, the most humiliating of all, as if we had not experienced dozens of such before.
That's why the preoccupation after the game with questions of the lineup and formation seemed puzzling, as if it had meaning.
As if the problem is in Oskar's failure or Dor Peretz's placement in position 6. After all, with all the formations, all the formations, with all of them we failed.
We lost with everyone.
With a foreign coach, and with a local coach.
With the grief process, and building on legionnaires, and putting brakes on.
With a professional manager, a technical manager, a search committee.
We appointed Kashtan, Grant, Gutman, coaches who looked exactly like Barak Bacher in Anker today.
We brought in foreign coaches, a foreign team, free of politics.
We tried everything.
What is the point of probing the wound, when the disease is internal.
We have already failed with all the formations, all the formations, all the coaches.
Gloch/GettyImages, Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP
But since football is indeed a game that is decided on small moves and small details, there are some (symbolic) decisions and events that can be dwelled on.
Like, for example, Gabi Kanikowski's foul, which led to the equalizing goal with a free kick.
After all, there is no questioning Kanikowski's commitment and his desire, but he went up for a high ball and sent an elbow to his opponent's face due to that traditional physical inferiority, against an Icelandic opponent that none of us know or remember the name of.
Anyone who regularly sees Kanikowski recognizes that in recent weeks he has not been sharp, that he needs rest like all his friends at Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa in light of the extreme workload, but that is what it is.
An unnecessary offense, resulting from helplessness.
And then an Icelandic footballer, with a name that hasn't been caught, kicks a great shot, dispelling any claim that they are the physical and we are the technical.
Or for example, Roy Rabivo.
The feeling that he is a bunker, without knowing why.
And then his removal, which is justified of course, which brings back memories of Abba Haim's red against Denmark, and the feeling that there is a matter of tradition here, a genetic load that has been passed from father to son for decades, a legacy that flows in his blood, as if it is stronger than him.
Admittedly, this is not the same red card, not the same escape from responsibility of Haim Rabivo, but it is an offense that results from fatigue, bordering on laziness, from a desperate and brutal attempt to stop an opponent's attack, and again, from physical weakness and helplessness.
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. If this is the initiator, there is nothing to complain about
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the contractor. : The football association estimates that Hazan will not continue in the national team
A defeatist statement, most uncharacteristic of his career approach.
Zahavi/GettyImages, Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP
Hazan and Benion have to pay the price, but the problem is bigger than them.
Gadi Kinda returned to Israel and got a fat contract, in the Premier League he is a star, but against strong Icelanders he had trouble functioning.
Anan Halaili is a talented footballer, he already proved it against Fiorentina for example, but the Israeli national team makes him score an own goal.
Perhaps because Eran Zahavi was asked at the end about his penalty miss, and said "we were down to ten players, I don't think we would have been able to keep it" (for the draw!), and in fact, in a defeatist statement, most uncharacteristic of his attitude in his career, illustrates how just by wearing the uniform This team, a footballer receives loads on him that weigh him down, pull him down, as if he loses faith just by seeing the symbol of the association on the lapel of his clothes, just by being part of the mechanism.
But all this will soon be forgotten.
The league is back.
Here begins the top playoffs, and once again major battles for the championship.
Here Vitor is a force in the stationary situations, Goldberg is an anchor in defense and a joker in attack, Dor Peretz will return to extract balls constantly against the midfielders of Hapoel Haifa.
Once again we are left "alone", as an "economist" defined it, shut up, between ourselves, without anyone interfering with reality.
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Israel national football team
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Gabi Kanikowski
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