"I live not far from here and as a kid I used to fetch footballs from behind the goal. One time the head coach at the time, Geol Micalis, saw what I was doing and said to me "Come here, kid" and I've been with Maccabi ever since
Yehoshua Glazer, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Israel national star in the first years after the declaration of the State of Israel, is the first guest in a series of articles about the greatest players in the history of the club. Yehoshua, or "Shaya" as he was known to everyone, grew up in Tel Aviv's Usishken neighbourhood near the harbour and as a child he had the habit of hanging about at the Maccabiah athletic grounds near the estuary of the Yarkon river in north Tel Aviv. "The flat I grew up in was very close to the pitch so when the fans would shout out my name, my dad, who was quite old at the time, would go to the window and scream: 'Shaya's not home now!'".
In a video interview to the official Maccabi Tel Aviv website, the first striker to wear the number 9 on his jersey in the period after the establishment of the State of Israel talks about the times, the conditions, the rivalries with Hapoel Tel Aviv and Hapoel Petah Tikva and, how could it be otherwise, about himself: "I'm telling you, before me there had never been a "racer" (forward with speed) like me". In this interview Glazer opens a window on an entirely different period in Maccabi's history, a time when there wasn't any money, when football was more a hobby than a profession ("We used to come after work") and when loyalties meant everything. "I got offers from abroad, the Turks were ready to offer me the crown jewels, but my brother asked me not to go so I stayed a Maccabi fan".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jgof0mqmp5g&feature=plcp
