Opening up 2017. Tonight, Maccabi Tel Aviv starts the new calendar year with away clash at Beitar Jerusalem and we decided to go back in time, 68 years to be exact since the State of Israel was founded to check out some of the fantastic Yellow & Blue statistics when playing the first match of the new year.
Since the founding of the State of Israel, Maccabi has played 61 league matches, 4 Toto Cup contests and 3 State Cup games.
Maccabi’s record stands at 42 wins, 14 draws and 12 losses for the fist game of the calendar year.
Yosele Merimovitch holds the Maccabi Tel Aviv goal scoring record in the first match of the year with 12 goals in the 1949, 1950 and 1951 openers.
Maccabi has played 10 matches on the first Monday of the month of January to begin the calendar year not including tonight’s clash against Beitar Jerusalem
21,000 fans attended the January 1977 3:2 Derby win that began the calendar year. This also happened to be the opening match with the most spectators.
Jerry Beit HaLevi coached the most matches to start the year, standing on the sidelines 11 times. Avram Grant managed 8 contests while Itzhak Shneor coached 5 games.
Maccabi Tel Aviv faced Beitar Jerusalem twice to open the calendar year, both times at Bloomfield Stadium. 1983’s match ended in a goalless draw and the 2001 game was a 2:0 Maccabi victory.
Maccabi has made 6 comebacks in the first contest of the year, one of which took place on January 7th 1992 in a game against Beitar Tel Aviv. Beitar took a 2:1 lead but Uri Malmillian and Eli Drikes scored to give the Yellow & Blue a 3:2 win.
