Also suitable for children to read!
A complex of three football fields was used by the players in Haifa in the distant past. An old past that was close to the establishment of the state. The senior courts "Maccabi" and "Hapoel" and next to the court "The Power" on which I was also privileged to play. The senior courts were fenced off with concrete fences and at the upper end, sharp bottle fragments were embedded to prevent splashing onto the court, or sitting on the wall. There were three options before the children who longed to watch a league game. First possibility to buy a ticket, which was not within our reach. The second option to hatch, or the third, to adopt a new father for twenty minutes. An adult ticket allowed Kunho to bring his little son into the field as well.
Sticking to the line to enter the field allowed, very politely in a sad and poor voice, to ask one of the adults to let you into the field as his son. The queue consists of men who love football and all you have to do is choose someone who will let you into the field and that's all. Some were looking for someone as their pet. A nice and good father, maybe generous pocket money. Usually they stayed outside, because each of the waiting had his own offspring and was happy to escape from them for a few hours to watch the game in peace.
This law did not determine whether the child was one year old or fifty years old. Each usher at the entrance, according to his mood that day, determined your fate. in or out. For example, a twenty-year-old adult who bought a ticket, cannot let his fifteen-year-old son in, which is a shame.
Those who did not know how to develop a skill in deciphering body language, were left out. You need to notice the movement of the pupil and know: "This is my father from now until... ten minutes." All your potential fathers are lined up. A short look into your eyes and a nod from his side lets you know that he is the chosen father. As soon as you enter the field you part as friends, and there is a reasonable chance that you will never meet this temporary father, you will not receive weekly pocket money and he will not go up to the Torah with you on the day of Bar Mitzvah.
There were Saturdays when the audience did not want to adopt a child, or they were full of their own and did not want to hear about the idea of adoption. That's when the third option was activated, which was difficult but full of professional satisfaction. the worship. As a poor sports fan you must develop many skills such as improvisation, physical fitness, a character actor with an affinity for theater and of course clinical psychology. As knowledge is expanded in any field, the chance of seeing a game increases.
On the sides of the field there are apparently impassable coiled wire fences. They are indeed like that for ordinary citizens but not for commando kids. At the risk of cutting off a piece of meat from the leg or buttock, including a piece of pants, God forbid. Go explain to your mother where the missing piece is. "Mom, I climbed a three-meter-high wall and sat on broken bottles, but I was very careful when I went through the wire fences that were around." Such a situation must not be reached.
You look for a path inside the barbed wire until you reach the foot of the wall that surrounds the field. We had to find equipment that would raise us to a height of about three meters. Boards, helping each other and holes in the wall that made it possible to push a foot to climb. Eventually settle on the wall. A search begins for a location for a butt among the glass fragments protruding from the wall. In a certain position it became possible and then I sat my delicate and cute butt on the broken glass, expecting to see the football heroes.
More than once the sitting ended with torn pants, at best, and sometimes even the tender fillet meat was injured. Rarely was it also possible to jump into the field area and then without effort I watched the game sitting on a real concrete seat without an adoptive father doing a favor who chooses you and without colored glasses stuck in the butt.
The Haifa players that I admired and knew also from the training sessions I sometimes watched live, were of course: Asher Almani, Avraham Manchel, Johnny Hardy, "Pitzel'a", Ahar'la Frankfurter and the goalkeeper Schulz who was before Davidovich the father of.... Under such conditions I was also privileged to see actors such as Yaakov Khodorov, Glazer, Visoker, Stelmach, Asher Belot and many other good ones, and apologies to those who were not mentioned.
The enjoyment of the games justified the tears in the flesh and clothes, not to my mother's knowledge of course, who would have freaked out if she saw the surface on which my delicate buttocks lay.
- Ilan Segal -
We had the miser's stand in Stella Maris with binoculars. But one of the best memories in Kiryat Eliezer is when they opened the gates in the last minutes for those who were in a hurry to leave, and in fact this caused the entry of all those waiting who were hoping to see something more from the game and sometimes a whole game of a draw for the payers ended with a decisive goal and sometimes another incident of A red card that made you feel like you earned more than the payers
Ilan writes very, very beautifully