Every championship winning season has it’s song and the soundtrack that echoed Maccabi’s dream season turned into one of the biggest terrace hits of all times. The one responsible for that is Stalos, one of the household names in terms of Greek music in Israel, who launched the song: ‘Yalla Ya Maccabi’ that became the eternal championship song.
Ahead of the launch of our Retro kit you are invited here below to remember the song and on the way we held a short interview with Stalos where he spoke of his work.
“Maccabi was a very strong side that season with great players led by a coach in Avram Grant. I sat with mates of mine who told me: ‘You are a maccabi fan, why don’t you write a song?’ he remembers. “I loved the idea, created this catchy song and later on I wrote another song for the 1995/96 season”.
Stalos, who revealed to be a Maccabi Tel Aviv fan from a young age, added: “We recorded the song in one of the Tel Aviv studios. In fact this is a song that is based on a Greek tune of a song that was a major hit in Greece at the time – and we just wrote the lyrics. It turned out well and luckily had the players’ names in it. Even now-days when I am performing live, I get requests from people to perform that song. There are those who don’t give up, and even-though I try to convince them that ‘it is no longer relevant’ they still insist on this song because it arguably a nice song”.
On his love-affair with the fans, Stalos continued: “I remember this song was released and the stands were buzzing from excitement. They used to sing it as the song was extremely successful amongst fans. I remember singing it at the championship winning celebrations at Rabin square in front of 30,000 fans – which was a phenomenal experience one can never forget”.
Q: Do you remember how the players reacted?
“Of course I remember their reaction. Avi Nimni in particular loved this song. And so did Itzik Zohar, Avi Cohen and they rest of the players were very complimentary”.
To sum things up the veteran singer added that in the event you meet him in a show, unless you really insist, you will probably not receive an exclusive performance: “I can tell you that to deal with football songs is a very complex matter. I sing to all types of audiences, also to fans of rival teams, so I try not to mix football in live performances. There are die-hard fans so I know they don’t feel too comfortable that it sing that song right in their faces. So I decided I will only sing that song and birthday parties of fans and only if someone who grew up on that song really really asks me for it. And only if I know that unless I sing him that song he will not get off my back. So overall I try not to sing football songs in live shows”.
