This year is not the first time in Israeli history that the football season was impacted by the security situation in the country
This past weekend was already intended to be matchweek 2 of the 2014/15 Israeli "Winner" (Premier) League season, but 50 days of military conflict this past summer made changes to that timetable inevitable. Maccabi Tel Aviv will only kick off their league season next Saturday, three weeks later than scheduled, and fingers are crossed it won't have an untoward influence on the club's game plan.
Prior to this past summer's hostilities, there were other wars and battles at other times that exercised various effects on the Israeli football league. Only two years ago a similar cross-border conflict in the south saw a siren for a rocket attack go off just prior to a Maccabi Tel Aviv home game against Bnei Yehuda. But the league proceeded uninterrupted and Maccabi went on to win the title for the first time in a decade.
Coincidentally, the first time military events interfered with the Israeli Premier League the result was also a Maccabi Tel Aviv championship. That was the 1949/50 season, the first year after the establishment of the State of Israel. Nothing went according to schedule that year, not at least according to what we're accustomed to today. The league kicked off in May 1949 in wartime, saw a summer break of three months as the war was coming to an end and finished in June of 1950. And unlike today, spectacular results like 2-10 away against Maccabi Haifa and 0-13 away against Maccabi Rishon Lezion were not considered so unusual.
The next season to feel the impact of war was in 1956/57 during the Sinai campaign, but in this case the results for Maccabi were not so fortunate. They went into the season as reigning champions and were given an extra three months to enjoy the glory, with the season starting only at the beginning of December, a month after the war ended. Unfortunately the titleholders finished a full five points off the pace, inevitably raising the question "what if" the season had started on time without any interruptions to the team's preparations.
Though it began in June, the Six Day War in 1967 came at a time when Maccabi were well into one of their best seasons ever. Long before the war started, in September 1966, a declared double season designed to avoid relegations got underway which came to its conclusion only in June 1968. The war broke out during a mid-season break, just as the clubs were preparing for the second year of the double season. Nonetheless the State Cup competition was played in its usual annual format, and in November 1967 Maccabi defeated municipal archrivals Hapoel Tel Aviv 1-2 to hoist that year's trophy.
Maccabi were unable to repeat the feat in the 1968 State Cup, but one of the most gifted sides the club have ever known were not about to let the war interfere with their preparations for the second half of the double season. After 60 matchweeks and a neck and neck title race with Hapoel Petach Tikva, Maccabi won by a margin of just three points and proudly returned the trophy to the yellow and blue Maccabi trophy cabinet after ten long years without a league championship. A squad that brought multiple successes to the club and contained the likes Giora Spiegel, Tzvika Rosen, Haim Levine and "Miko" Belo, some of the greatest stars in Maccabi history, would carry on the following season with an historic win in the Asian Club Cup.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War influenced the club in more ways than one. It not only delayed the season opening, it also saw football players from all over the country, including Maccabi, receiving call-ups for national service, military in this case. Some of the club's promising young players, including today's first team manager Benny Tabak, were still too young for military service and continued to train with the club. Many others however did most of their training, and fighting, in another kind of uniform altogether, and the sports press declared it "the war season". And even those who managed to play in State Cup competition were only on furlough and returned to their units shortly afterwards. In what characterised perhaps more than anything else football in the shadow of war, Maccabi goalkeeper at the time, the late Michael "Lufa" Kadosh, returned for a State Cup tie against Maccabi Ramat Amidar from the Sinai Peninsula and was placed straight in the first eleven. As for the league season itself, it ended in disappointment, with Maccabi Tel Aviv falling just two points shy of 1974 champions Maccabi Netanya.
So what lessons can be learnt from this short history lesson? Will this summer's conflict and resultant season opening delays have an impact on Maccabi's results on the pitch? Nothing conclusive really, except that the 2014/15 season has been too long in coming and that Maccabi's title defence will definitely start on September 14th against Maccabi Petach Tikva. Let's hope it will be a successful, and peaceful, season for us all.
