By scoring Maccabi Tel Aviv's first goal in their 5-0 humbling of Hapoel Acre last night, Eran Zahavi also netted the club's 3,000th Israeli Premier league goal
Last night (Saturday), Maccabi Tel Aviv once again passed an historical milestone when star midfielder Eran Zahavi scored the team's first of five goals against Hapoel Acre. It was the club's 3,000th goal in Israeli Premier League play, a total no other team in Israel has ever achieved. Just to put this into its proper perspective, the two Israeli Premier league clubs occupying the second and third places in the all-time league goalscoring table are Maccabi Haifa with 2,685 and Hapoel Tel Aviv at 2,558.
Recordkeeping started sometime in 1949 at Maccabi Tel Aviv's first ever Israeli Premier League match, and it was one of the club's finest ever players, Eli Fuchs, who took the honours when he scored the first of six Maccabi Tel Aviv goals in their 6-2 humbling of Maccabi Petach Tikva at then home ground, Maccabiah Stadium. The next milestone came a little over ten years later, in the 1959/60 season, when yet another of Maccabi Tel Aviv's legendary goalscorers, Rafi Levi, then at the height of his Maccabi career, scored the club's 500th goal to close a two goal deficit against Hapoel Tel Aviv to 1-2 in a thrilling match that ended in a 3-3 draw. The club's 1,000th goal belongs to yet another great Maccabi striker, Dror Bar Nur, who led the Maccabi attack for an entire decade from 1966 to 1976. And it was his first of two goals against Hapoel Hadera in the 1971/72 season that not only saw Maccabi come from behind to win the match 2-1, it also sent Maccabi's all-time league goalscoring total into four digits. A bit less than fourteen years later, midfielder Moti Ivanir sent the ball into the back of Hapoel Jerusalem's net in a 1-3 victory at the capital's now mythological YMCA Stadium, raising Maccabi's league total to 1,500 goals.
After that the club raised their goalscoring tempo and it took less than nine years to reach the next milestone of 2,000 goals. It was the Championship season of 1994/95 and Maccabi Tel Aviv were on their way to a 4-0 hammering of Hapoel Haifa, indebted largely to midfielder Victor Belkin's hat-trick. But it was the scorer of the fourth goal, striker Nir Sivilia, who ultimately got the gong for two millennia of Maccabi league goalscoring. And it was in a second Championship season, 2002/2003, that the most recent milestone of 2,500 league goals was accomplished. Maccabi's short but deadly Chilean striker, Rodrigo Goldberg, headed in the second goal in the ever so important 2-1 victory over Hapoel Beer Sheva just five matches from the end of a season that proved to be a nail-biter from start to finish.
And by scoring the club's first goal last night, Eran Zahavi has now recorded yet another significant milestone in the history of Israeli football courtesy of its most decorated club, Maccabi Tel Aviv.
