League stracture and the centers

The Israeli football has 6 divisions. The Supper Legaue – Toto league (Ligat Ha'al), which has 12 teams. The premiere league (Liga Leumit), also with 12 teams and the National one with… 12 teams (Liga Archit) .The next ones are league A with two regions north and south with 14 teams each .Under that there is league B , with four regions – north a, north b , south a ans south b – each one has 16 teams .The last one is league C with many small regions.
The teams of the Supper League :
Beitar Jerusalem , Maccabi Tel Aviv , Hapoel Tel Aviv, Maccabi Haifa , C.S. Ashdod , Maccabi Natanya , Hapoel Kfar Saba, Bnei Yehuda , Hachoa Amidar – Ramat Gan , Hapoel Petach Tikva , Maccabi Herzelia , Maccabi Petach Tikva.
You probably noticed that most of the teams has similar parts in their names – most of them Maccabi and Hapoel .

The centers

To understand is the Israeli football culture it is important to be aware to the centers.
The centers are remaining from the days that Israel was established . each political group had its own center that gave money to his team …each team used to be politically attached with the parties. These centers are not only football issues , they relevent to all Israeli sport .

Maccabi – Named after the Maccabim – which were jewish rebellion 2000 years ago . Maccabi movement was founded by Max Nordau as a sportive jewish movement .
Hapoel – Established as the union if the workers and it aim was to develop the sport culture . It main color is red , so many of it teams plays that color . Used to be the left wing , these days the teams are private , but some still remain with the socialist agenda .
Beitar – Not many teams but it has the Jerusalem team , which known as Beitar .Beitar was the revisionst side – right wing .Established in 1923 by Zeev Zabotinsky. As part of its action , Beitar dealed with sport.
There are few more centers , such Elitzor – the religious one and some small other .

Intro

My name is Shay Golub . In the last months I am working to establish the Israeli football supporters organization. Some weeks groups of German friends came to Israel as part of Yad Achat organization . Some of them were deeply involved in the German supporters scene . We spent lots of time talking about the German and the Israeli supporters scenes . When they came back to Germany we scheduled that I will send them every three month some stories about the Israeli football culture and reverse . So the best solution untill our web site will be online is this blog.
Beside that a lot of people around the world are interested in Israel for all kind of reasons , ans this blog aim is to show these people other perspective of Israel.