Welcome to 5778. After closing out 5777 in style, it’s time to look ahead to the new Jewish Year and what a way to begin it with an Israeli Football Classico against Maccabi Haifa.
There is a saying that “prophecy was given to fools” so we decided not to take a chance but to look back at Maccabi’s Jewish New Year opening Matchdays to see what history tells us.
Celebrating the 3:0 win over Haifa ()
The match against Maccabi Haifa will be the 69th Matchday to open the new Jewish year. As of the now the record stands at 34 wins, 16 draws and 18 losses.
From the year 5768 let’s go back to 5712. Why do you ask? Maccabi recorded their biggest win ever on the first Matchday of the New Year when Yosele Merimovitch and his Yellow & Blue side defeated Maccabi Rishon Le’Zion 9:1.
In fact, Merimovitch also scored the most goals by any other player in an opening Matchday.
In 5755 Yuri Shukanov slotted home the fastest goal in the first Matchday of the new Jewish year when he scored in the 1st minute of a 2:1 win over Maccabi Netanya.
Let’s get back to Maccabi Haifa and opening Matchdays. This will be the 8th time that the Greens will be Maccabi’s opponent to begin the Jewish New Year and will join Maccabi Netanya with 8 as the Yellow & Blue’s most frequent opponent.
In short:
The Jewish New Year matches are split up as follows: 45 league matches, 8 Cup contests, 7 Toto Cup games and 6 European tilts.
The Club’s first ever Champions League Group Stage match was played against Bayern Munich on Rosh Hashana 5765, the first day of the Jewish New Year.
The most fans to attend the first Matchday of the Jewish year was in 5732 as 21,000 spectators witnessed a 1:0 win over Maccabi Netanya.
