It’s been two years since I’ve been away from you. Two years I’ve been waking up at hours that are not normal and living in two time zones with my heart aching from missing you. Two years of Yellow-and-Blue through the TV screen with me getting more and more excited as each week passes by.
Suddenly, my living room replaces Bloomfield and on Matchday I’m frantic as people don’t understand why. Suddenly, I live in a country that plays “Soccer”, where people are still falling in love with the sport, but it’s still not “Football”.
And then the biggest prize of them all, the Champions League falls into my lap. Finally after 11 long years we’re back to where we began and where I started from. 11 years ago I made sure to see the likes of Bayern, Juventus and Ajax and then it hit me – I’m a 16 hour flight from Israel – Can I do it? Will I be able to find a way to meet up with Jose Mourinho and Iker Casillas?
The first match was Chelsea and thankfully that was easy enough. From coming home to Israel for a festive family meal on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year to the flight to London to experience one of the greatest evenings in the history of the franchise at Stamford Bridge, it certainly isn’t any better than that. I didn’t make it to the home match against Kiev as I had a much bigger challenge ahead of me, the biggest since I left my home land; how to get to Porto for Matchday Three.
I started in Hong Kong where I needed to figure out an easy enough way to get to the city of wine and vineyards. First, there was a 13 hour flight to London, but that was only
the appetizer. After an hour long layover, I took a two-and-a-half hour flight to Lisbon from London. Unfortunately my bag didn’t make it to Lisbon and I nearly missed my 3-hour train ride to Porto.
On Tuesday, October 20th at 16:00, 21 hours and 11 thousand kilometers later I arrived at my destination, wiped out. However, my exhaustion quickly disappeared when I got to the main square and I met up with thousands of Yellow-and-Blue diehards who summoned me to my calling as we began on our way to the Dragao Stadium for another Maccabi Champions League evening.
We didn’t score or collect a point and here we are yet again. In Israel on our way to Sammy Ofer Stadium. The final address in my GPS before I can go home. This journey has been a cross-world adventure following the club I love. When they step onto the pitch that familiar feeling comes back to life, because it doesn’t matter where I live and how far I am; “I’ll be wherever you go and right behind you Maccabi”. Even a half a world away.
