Back to the good old days of Hapoel Petah Tikva

Itzik Visoker, one of the greatest Israeli goalkeepers in history, stands at the entrance to the entrance to the Moshava Stadium in Petah Tikva. An elaborate sports facility from another era, a home to prove the abilities of his successors at Hapoel Petah Tikva’s luxury club, which also serves as Maccabi Petah Tikva’s fortress. “Do you see this stadium with more than 11,000 seats? If our team had played in it, all 11,000 tickets would have been sold, and quite a few more would have been left out. Only from people sitting on the trees then could half a stadium be filled here.”

Formerly the great thing in Israeli football, in the 50s and 60s, Hapoel Petah Tikva, is today trying to survive in the national league. Perhaps the efforts after Eyal Berkowitz entered the system as a professional manager will help it be saved. “Whoever wore the Hapoel Petah T – shirt, and the degrees they brought, would probably have put more effort into thinking about their workplace,” says Reuven Yefet.

Not many in the country were exposed to the name Reuven Yefet. Only a few Petach Tikvaim will recognize this man on the street, already 86. The right-back in the big team, who has won the national championship six times and one more trophy. An ordinary and modest person, without any aura of publicity. Six championships with Hapoel Petah Tikva, just like the record of the millennium of Mahran Rady, who won six consecutive championships in terms of tenure at Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Beer-Sheva.

“Hapoel Petah Tikva was at the time the state’s team, there is no doubt,” says Yefet. “Not once but six times. And she took it from Maccabi Tel Aviv, which had dominated until then. Out of the group. “

It all happened on that court on Abarbanel Street, in a complex that included a competitive swimming pool, where many concepts such as “the best defense is the attack” were set. That stadium, which like others before it became a residential neighborhood that he built, as the world is small, a contractor named Amos Luzon. Yes, from the owners of the rival Maccabi Petah Tikva.

To tell about that amazing team, we brought together Visoker, Reuven Yefet, the liaison Asher Zelikovich and the team historian Nissim Calderon, who from the age of 12 did not miss training as a spectator of his idols: “My mother Mazal received my labor on the field. Nahum Stelmach brought the first state cup to our party at home. ”

To get proportions of who Hapoel Petah Tikva was, here are two figures: the only football club in Israel that won five consecutive championships (1959 to 1963), and another that preceded them. The only club that was ranked 17 consecutive seasons in the top three places.

Representatives of the championship generation were received with much respect at the current facility. The manager of the stadium, Reuven Katz, pays tribute to Hapoel Petah Tikva’s generation of elephants: “Even though I have always been a fan of Maccabi Petah Tikva.”

Itzik Visoker has always sought justice. “You did not invite me for an interview as one of the winners of the championships, because exactly that year we went down to second place. I came to represent my brother Yankele, who passed away and was the goalkeeper before me. He had an important role in the championships. He was the best goalkeeper in the league.”

But at the gate of the national team stood Yankele Khodorov, a huge goalkeeper, so how was your brother the best?
“It is true that Khodorov was great and gave excellent games, but in the league my brother’s role was more difficult and bigger. Hapoel Petah Tikva played completely offensively and needed perfect coordination. “Hodorov’s Hapoel Tel Aviv invested more in its defensive players, which means he had relative quiet compared to my brother. Yankele was a great goalkeeper.”

Asher Zelikovich, another three months old at 90, played only in the first championship. To this day he plays tennis twice a week and only goes to bed at dawn, after making sure to watch sports broadcasts in the middle of the night: “Mostly NBA and Danny Abdia.”

Zelikovich said of the first championship: “The championships were then built in the youth team. Hapoel Petah Tikva was one of the first to understand the importance of investing in youth. This is what is now called ‘academia’. At the same academy were educated many who became championship winners. “The legendary Nahum Stelmach, Boaz Kaufman and Jerry Khaledi were among them, and they were not the only ones.”

The peak in the youth department was recorded in 1962, when a young defender named Dror Kashtan, later a championship contractor as a coach, played for the senior national team, without having had time to record a single appearance for Hapoel Petah Tikva graduates.

The team was strengthened by a number of anonymous players. For example, Yefet, who was not a footballer on the team at all. He played football in the army, and was surprised to find out that he had been summoned to the team of the Command Training in the games for the Cup of the Chief of Staff, Moshe Dayan. The Training Command surprised the Central Command in the final and won the trophy.

“After participating in the training of several teams, I came to Hapoel Petah Tikva. Uri Karni then served in two positions, secretary of the team, what is today called the general manager, and braked in the lineup. Shlomo (Tzachi) Nahari, a kibbutznik from Nir Eliyahu, came with me, whose games in the Nahal team upgraded him. Karni promised us according to the training, that we would have a place in the team, but gave us time to decide. Already on the way to the bus, I told Tzachi that Hapoel Petah Tikva is suitable for us in terms of human composition. “

Nahari recalled that before that he played for Hapoel Raanana, wanted to move on, and wanted to move to Hapoel Kfar Saba, which was the senior team in the Sharon area. Only coach Emanuel Sheffer, who later gained fame, ruled he did not need him. “I joined Hapoel Petah Tikva, on the way to training I met Nahum Stelmach, who was the biggest star, and played in front of me in the Chief of Staff’s Cup. Stelmach asked me what I was doing here.”

Nahari has scored 68 goals in his career at Hapoel Petah Tikva, the fifth in the rankings. Like Lifat, he has six championships. Passed away last Thursday at the age of 82.

Hapoel Petah Tikva in the 1950s did not wait for the current Mitch Goldhaar to decide that only foreign coaches would work for them. And they beat a piece of work. The English gentleman Jack Gibbons was signed after coaching the national team, bringing two championships and the state cup. Hungarian Ignaz Molner Went on to his own championship, and the Yugoslavian Miodrag Juvanovic finished both championships. For balance, we have to return to the first championship in 1954/55, which was led by the Israeli Moshe Varun, as a player-coach, a double-accepted role at the time.

The general idea, especially with Gibbons, was that the team played with 5 strikers. From right to left were Nahari, Stelmach, Boaz Kaufman, Zechariah Ratzbi and Avshalom Ratzbi. Except for Avshalom, Zechariah’s younger brother, they were all team players. “The method,” says Visoker, worked like this: the genius Jerry Khaledi in the link and Reuven Yefet put balls to the golden head of Nahum Stelmach, who was a deadly weapon. “Nahum and Zechariah Ratzbi jumped into the balls, and continued to net what fell.”

The most dizzying game in history, the one that those who live today and saw then will not forget, was against Hapoel Tel Aviv. October 19, 1963. Hapoel Tel Aviv already led 0: 3 in three minutes. Haim Bachar reduced to 3: 1 even before the break. Shalom Petersburg International gave hope when it reduced the damage to 3: 2. In the last ten minutes, Stelmach and Nahari completed the turnaround to 3: 4. After the game, Hapoel Petah Tikva conceived the sentence: “The best defense is the attack.”

The lineup of Petah Tikva in the most memorable game was: Yaakov Visoker, Yehezkel Ben-Tovim, Shalom Belbul (now his), Aryeh Redler, Shalom Petersburg, Haim Bachar: Zion Sharabi Shlomo Nahari, Boaz Kaufman, Nahum Stelmach and Avshalom Ratzbi Excited by the spectators who had to hang on trees outside the stadium, they were simply ripped to the ground.

As usual then, Hapoel Petah Tikva arranged most of its players in various jobs for livelihood purposes. Zelikovich worked in a warehouse at Beilinson Hospital, left defender Arie Redler worked with Reuven Yefet and another player Marcel Abramovich in the technical department of the post office, now Bezeq.

The team players benefited from Redler’s services in helping expedite phone requests, a not-so-easy problem in those days. Redler, after the end of his playing career, became the coach who led Maccabi Netanya to the national championship in 1973.

One of the big fans of the group was a Kfar Saba boy, Shlomo Sharaf. When he reached the age of coach of the national team, he invited his childhood idol, Nahum Stelmach, to be his assistant. Stelmach died in March 1999 while being sent on a pilgrimage to the Austrian national team in Valencia, Spain.

The same Stelmach, still the top scorer of Hapoel Petah Tikva. Scored 22 goals for the team, the most important of which fell into the definition of “unforgettable”: the equalizer for the net by Lev Yashin the Great at the Raj Stadium. Although the Soviet Union won 1: 2, Stelmach’s goal, with a touchdown of course, was celebrated in the country as if the team had won the World Cup.

The great prize for the success of Hapoel Petah Tikva in those years was in the form of a trip abroad every summer, usually by ship to Europe and from there to the Far East and the United States. On one occasion, the team traveled for 66 days to hold games in Europe and the Far East. “I remember we once played in India in terrible heat,” says Yefet. “Every two meters outside the field a jug of water was placed.”