Moni Niño with Chuchko Levy at the 75th anniversary ceremony for Maccabi Jaffa/Ofir Molgan
"Before the recruitment, I was assured by the managers of Maccabi Jaffa that a service would be arranged for me close to home so that I could play football. At the Tel Hashomer base, they put me on a bus and said that the direction was for combat engineering. I started to shout that another place had been arranged for me, but then suddenly Ralph Klein, the famous basketball player, got on the bus of
Maccabi
Tel Aviv, took me off the bus and placed me in the training command. Of course, I played for the Central Command team in the IDF Championship under coach Yosef Marimovich."
January 20, 1940. "Father Leon was an outstanding soccer player in the Sofia power team. There was also a Jewish team of Maccabi Sofia, the Jews divided their sympathies between Slavia and Levski Sofia. Father immigrated to Israel aged 34, he started training at Maccabi Jaffa in the 1949/50 season, in the second division, the special league of the Tel Aviv district. He received an offer from Hapoel Jaffa, which arranged a job for him at the Tel Aviv port. Hapoel Jaffa of that season was in the table ahead of Maccabi Jaffa, when Beitar Jaffa was also there. Father played as a defender, I saw all his games, he was my first role model. After a season and a half due to age, he retired from football. Regina's mother loved football and did not He prevented father and me from kicking the ball. They had two sons, me and my younger brother."
With the establishment of the state, they immigrated to Israel, first to Pardes Hana, and from there to Jaffa. "For some reason, father refused to move into a beautiful, abandoned house in Jaffa and renovate it. He purchased a house near Pardes Daga'ani, where Maccabi Jaffa's first field was established, a field that we children of the neighborhood helped the adults to build."
Where does the nickname Chuchako come from?
"In Bulgaria, father was a glazier and his nickname was Chuchko, a glass breaker. That's how this nickname passed to me and to my brother, who was talented in football but not serious and didn't persist."
His wife Rachel passed away six months ago. "She left great sadness and pain in the family. We have three daughters, Melli, Orli and Liat, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren."
How did you meet your late wife Rachel?
"Rachel loved sports and came with a friend to the Maccabi Jaffa field, where it all began. Rachel was the secretary of the chairman of Maccabi Jaffa Avraham Graziani. There was not one on the court who did not hear her shouts of encouragement. She prepared the training plans for me from the children to the adults. The family misses Rachel."
The story of the bus from Tiberias and the birth of your daughter?
"Rachel was pregnant and insisted on joining an away game against Hapoel Tiberias, my father promised to watch over Aliya. On the way back, they held Rachel's labor, the bus arrived with the players at Dejani Hospital. Everyone guessed it would be a boy, but a lovely daughter was born."
Football was inherent in their family. "Close to the age of 11 I started playing for children and immediately for the boys, they saw me as a great talent. As a child I loved to watch Shia Glazer and Shneor from Maccabi Tel Aviv, but I connected with Maccabi Jaffa in the 1954/5 season that was promoted from the second league to the top league. I remember almost every goal of Baruch Cohen and Moshe Miranda. It was an exciting aliyah celebration for the people and immigrants of Bulgaria in Jaffa, I was a first-year boy's player at the time."
Maccabi Tel Aviv players helped build your dressing room.
"Maccabi Jaffa did not have a proper dressing room for a team in the first league, there was no permission from the municipality to build them. One night, Shneor, Yosef Goldstein, Studinski, Matanya, Turika, and Marimovich arrived at the field and built the dressing room until morning. The dressing room that was standing, of course, they did not destroy it. The Bulgarians of Jaffa liked Maccabi Tel Aviv as the second team."
He jumped from the boys to the senior team. "At the age of 15 and a half, I went to train with the senior who played for the first time in the senior league. I was excited to skip the youth team, I have no experience playing in the youth. Historical names played in the seniors at the time such as goalkeeper Engel, Baruch Cohen, Basraglik, Aryeh Yitzhak, Buchos Jojossian, Shlomo Varon, Avigdor Topcha Preciado, Gal and Miranda".
Then comes to Maccabi Jaffa, Itzik Shneor.
"In 1956, the Israeli national team returned to Israel from the trip to Russia and Hong Kong. Schnior, the captain of the national team and Maccabi Tel Aviv, left Maccabi Tel Aviv, and began coaching Maccabi Jaffa, and later became our player coach, he brought Avraham Turika to Jaffa. Schnior called me , had a pleasant conversation and told me that I would play for him in the Maccabi Jaffa team. He said and I did, I became the starting player for the team, suddenly everyone in Jaffa recognized and knew me."
He also received compliments from his opponents. "There was a friendly match against the Haifa team, Shia Held was playing in front of me. I had an excellent game, and at the end he came up to me, hugged me and said 'boy, your game is excellent and sporty, you will go far'. My first official game was at the end of 1956 against Hapoel Haifa" .
"The 1956/7 season was strange. A 10-team league that lasted less than five months. We finished in last place in a two-point league with only 10 points. We were supposed to be relegated, but the league was suspended. In the state cup, with Schneur as a brake, we raced forward, eliminated in the semi The final beat the champion Hapoel Tel Aviv 0:1. The final was in Haifa against Hapoel Petah Tikva. The game was held at the Kiryat Eliezer field, over three thousand Jaffa fans arrived by bus and train, Hapoel Petah Tikva had almost double the number of spectators. We struggled and fought against Stelmach, Ratsavi, Nahari And it was an even match. Ratsavi first scored a strike goal, perhaps the most beautiful I've ever seen, from the 16-meter line into our Gabi Engel's net. Bohus Jogessian brought hope to Sderot Jaffa, and scored into the net of Yaakov Wisokker, but Stelmach's strike made it 1:2 To develop hope. I had a sense of failure, I believed that we would bring the cup, which went the day after to Nahum and Nira Stelmach's wedding."
Who invented the rallying cry 'Heyda Bi, Heyda Bo'?
"In my opinion, Rabbi Avraham Becher, a devout fan of Maccabi Jaffa. They say that because of our morning game, he postponed circumcision until noon. We were a cohesive group of players, always supporting each other."
He has already closed with Hapoel Petah Tikva, "but the Jaffa managers were not ready to hear about my transfer, there was a complete veto. It is clear that I missed several championships in Malavas."
He was invited to the national team by coach Giola Mandi. "In October 1959, the RG Stadium was full of 55,000 enthusiastic spectators, the Yugoslavian national team came to play in the Olympic qualifiers. I started the lineup and trembled in front of the names that came up with me in the lineup. Mandy loved me very much, he called me Bozic like one of the great stars of the Hungarian wonder team. That was a huge compliment to me. Mandy's assistant, Edmond Shmilovich, asked the players not to go down to breakfast, at the Validor Hotel where we gathered for a training camp. We didn't understand the reason, but then the hotel staff arrived with a pampering breakfast straight to the beds of each player, we had a big appetite."
The match itself ended in 2:2 ("An ambitious fighting game by all the players, Nahum Stelmach scored two wonderful goals
Let's go back to Maccabi Jaffa. Did they help you financially?
"
Maccabi Jaffa was a team without high financial resources. My monthly salary was about 1,400 pounds, plus an additional amount as a coach in the youth department. I was the coach for the children of Mozzi Leon, also of Moshe Onana and others. I worked for 35 years at the Hamat factory as a mechanic and the combined salary was enough for the family."
And he also participated in the Maccabi European Championship. Yes, there was such a thing. "The Maccabi Center determined that whoever finished higher in the table between Maccabi Jaffa and Maccabi Tel Aviv at the end of the 1962 season, would represent Israel in the championship Maccabi Europe. We finished in second place, the yellows were saved from relegation. It was a disorganized trip, our treasurer didn't really have any money. Imagine that we arrived in the final match against Maccabi Belgium by public bus. We won 0:10, and on the way back we lost in a friendly match to Ajax 1:2."
In the 1969 season he retired. "I decided to make room for our wonderful young generation, I moved to live, coach and play in Hapoel Bat Yam."
There he also had a bizarre story with a house break-in. "I returned home one evening, I saw that there had been a break-in and a mess. But it turned out to me that nothing was stolen or destroyed, I forgot about the case. Several years later a guy who was a player in my team approached me on the street in Bat Yam. He apologized and told me that he didn't know whose house it was Elio broke in, but when he saw the photo albums from football, he realized that it was his coach's house, my house. He said, 'I left everything and quickly went out into the street.'"