Memories of the defeat to Denmark / Tor

In the end, as with anything, it’s a question of approach to life. Am I optimistic or pessimistic? Looking at the positive or negative side? Do I, for example, refer to my old habits, which for a long time have not provided me with joy, as an addiction, or as an expression of faith and devotion to something greater? So sorry for the philosophical opening and even more sorry, in advance, for the reduction from the soft mysticism of infinity to the hard concrete of the Ramat Gan stadium at the end of the previous millennium – but so it is with the Israeli team.

It’s almost inconceivable how time and time again it turns out that this battery is still not quite – completely, really, really exhausted. Left in it some more metaphysical fumes of energy, to believe that: this time the lottery is more convenient than ever / this time there is a talented generation / this time it is not a composition of stars but a modest bunch / this time the combination of Arabs and Jews will change karma / this time they brought a coach from abroad Sick of all the special viruses of our football and culture / this time we have learned from past mistakes – and so on and so on, we can continue this list until the next exile.

At the end, always, a new early campaign begins and some innocent inner child stands in the living room in front of the screen or in the bleachers – and does exactly the thing the adult inside, the Seven Bitter, tries to explain to him that he should have stopped doing long ago: believes it can be done. For this adult, with all the disguise of the rationality of his arguments, is himself captivated by false thoughts, about supernatural forces that prevent the dream from coming true.

It is clear to every fan of the Israeli team that no matter what happens, they will find the way No To qualify for a major tournament, as in an invoice series: if only one team qualifies, we will finish in second place. If we qualify for two, we will finish with a third. If they increase the World Cup to 548 teams, we will be 549. A goalkeeper will drop a ball (a year of shemita?), A brakeman will pull an opponent’s shirt in the open (guidance to a gentile in Jewish mourning customs?), A striker will lose his sense of scoring (a corona side effect?). Something will already happen, of all the areas of the game we have advanced in – the kicking technique of the bucket of the people sitting in Zion is the one that has been perfected most of all.

The optimistic childish apparatus, which always wins even if it always loses, will be strongly fueled in 1999 ahead of the pair of matches against Denmark in the Euro 2000 qualifying playoffs. These were days when there was a good reason to be an Israeli football fan, and there was even a good reason to be a fan of Israel: Eyal Berkowitz, Haim Revivo, Ronen Harazi, Tal Benin, Alon Hazan, Dudu Awat – footballers with respect even outside of Israel, who could be dreamed and fantasized about what their feet could do with the ball, and you could forget with them the daily troubles, hold in their heart a belief that it will be good , Without so much fear. It is said that he who believes is not afraid, but sometimes it seems to me that he who is afraid believes.

And if there was already a belief that it would be good, then there was also a diamond in the vicinity, still on the margins, in the making – Yossi Benyon. Joseph the dreamer, not yet 20 years old but having already shown on the grass, in the league and in the European factories, magic that shone in the light of the future: even after the golden age passes, there are those who will continue the beautiful path. Against Denmark he started the game on the bench.

Five months earlier, on June 6, and more precisely on the poetic date of 6.6.99, in the same stadium, in the home stage of the same campaign, the very same team, Forra dusted off the Austrian team with a resounding 0: 5. The main headline of the sports supplement of Yedioth Ahronoth after that victory was “The greatest in history.” A column by Haim Revivo, one of the heroes of the victory, appeared on the front page of the newspaper. Not of the sports supplement, of the newspaper. Shlomo Sharaf suggested “that all the commentators sit in the coop and go take a bath.” Admittedly, even then I did not understand the concept.

One can perhaps compare what happened in the time that passed between that victory and the meeting with Denmark on the evening of Saturday, November 13, to the six years that passed over the State of Israel between 1967 and 1973, between the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. The euphoria, the feeling that we are bigger than life, the belief that there is no opponent we can. I do not know exactly where escort girls go into this analogy, but maybe one day confidential protocols of government meetings from that period will open up and complete the metaphor for me.

The 0: 5 over Austria, which I experienced on the sofa in the living room, is probably what led me to be in the stands at the RJ Stadium in the first game against Denmark. It was not two minutes before John del Thomasson easily scored the first terrifyingly. He scored the second, which was even easier. The third was in the second half with a free kick, which flew to Awat’s corner, the fourth with a shot from 15 meters above the goalkeeper. The fifth was a spectacular goal, really spectacular, a kick from 25 meters for connections. The idiots like me who were still in the stands applauded, less to pay homage to the random Danny who scored the goal, and more to hurt back to our team players for what they did to us.The headline of the sports supplement the day after the game was “insulting”.

The truth is that in order to tell the details of what was supposedly there, I had to go to the archives. In my memory there is a fog with a bland taste of disappointment – from what happened to the team but also from myself, about the fact that I fell into the trap again. I remember standing, too full of the stadium, on the huge concrete foundations of the light poles to be able to see. From there, I remember how Revivo was sent off because he chased a player half a yard to get on his foot. I remember Benyon came on as a substitute in the first half, and I remember a moment when he and Berkowitz surrendered in the middle of the field with great talent and magic – and then lost the ball.

But what am I raving about what I remember from that bitter evening, let me tell you how I feel today: I believe this time it can be done. Good luck to the team.