In first place: The absolute best way to wake up from a nightmare that lasted six long years
The 1984/85 season diary
After the successes of the 1970's, Maccabi Tel Aviv entered the 80's with high hopes. But more than any other, the story of the team's 1984/85 season is the story of the decade in its entirety. The most decorated club in Israel failed to live up to expectations, despite having a number of spectacular names on a largely unspectacular squad. Throughout the first half of the season the team just about managed to keep in touch with the top of the table. But by year's end it became clear that yet another season had come and gone without merit, as Maccabi cast melancholy eyes upwards towards the league leaders from a lowly seventh position.
The 1984/85 derby diary: Hapoel Tel Aviv 0 Maccabi Tel Aviv 3
So after the gloomy intro, is there really any point carrying on? Well, amidst this depressing haze of mediocrity, there was one moment of pure bliss, a moment of considerable significance for Maccabi Tel Aviv's derby history. If it's gloom we're talking about, the team went into this particular derby with more than their usual share. The cloud of the longest ever run without a derby win hung low over the team's head and what remained was only a prayer that this awful nightmare would finally come to an end. For six long years, municipal archrivals Hapoel Tel Aviv had grown accustomed to employing the derby as a means of emerging from team crises and getting a boost to their season going forward.
20,000 fans crowded into Bloomfield Stadium and were treated to a spectacle that defied all expectations. The fortunes of a squad of some of the club's most illustrious names – defender Aviv Cohen, goalkeeper Boni Ginzburg, striker Vicki Peretz and midfielders Alon Natan and Moti Ivanir – turned around for that one evening, breaking the six-year derby curse in the most decisive fashion possible, scoring three goals to no reply. After eleven successive disappointing derbies that included five losses and six draws, the Yellow half of Tel Aviv finally had something to smile about.
Man of the match: Micky Ben Shitrit
This was midfielder Micky Ben Shitrit's maiden appearance for Maccabi Tel Aviv, after coming up through the Maccabi Haifa academy and playing for another municipal rival, Shimshon Tel Aviv, where he also had a knack for starring in derby matches. And it would take him just this one match to win the hearts of Maccabi fans forever. He didn't score the first goal of the match, that honour fell to another derby stand-out, a 17 year-old youngster by the name of Alon Natan, who opened the scoring on the half-hour mark. But it was Ben Shitrit who thereafter stole the show, scoring on the stroke of half time and again in the match's dying moments, to put an emphatic end to the longest winless derby run in Maccabi Tel Aviv history.
