Watching football in Tel Aviv: I was at the unfinished derby match.

At the end of last week a friend of mine informed me he had got us tickets to see the Tel Aviv derby on Sunday. This is the second time he's invited me to a match and I had mixed feelings: he buys tickets behind the goals where the fans don't sit in their seats: they stand throughout the game so if you want to see anything you have to stand for over an hour and a half.  The Israeli fans also like to eat unshelled sunflower seeds and spit out the shells.  This means that a lot of seats end up covered in disgusting sunflower shells.  Althoguh the tickets have marked seats you have to arrive 45 minutes early and simply pick a good place to stand because nobody take any notice of the seating.  In the previous match we went to, Maccabi Tel Aviv against HaPoel BeerSheva, most of the chants involved references to various people's mothers which I found distasteful.
My friend is a supporter (die hard?) of Maccabi Tel Aviv. I have no problem with this in basketball: as a teenager I watched Maccabi dismantle a CSKA Moscow team that refused to play in Israel, before going on to win the European cup.
In football I feel less keen.  In 2002, I watched HaPoel Tel Aviv knock (pre-Abramovitch) Chelsea out of the UEFA cup at Stamford Bridge and I like their hammer and sickle logo. HaPoel means "the labourer" and the team was originally sponsored by the trade union movement.  The Chelsea match was the last time I saw a game in England and you had to sit in your marked seat, stewards stood there, watching us like hawks and shouting at anyone who dared to stand up (we did dance around when HaPoel scored). On the pitch, policemen ignored the game and peered intently at the crowd watching for trouble makers.
As we left the pitch, I heard a Chelsea steward commenting to his friend, how disciplined the HaPoel supporters were. A Chelsea fan making Nazi salutes was simply ignored.

Yesterday was different.

There were masses of stewards, but they just ignored us and stood around.  As I said, the seat numbers on the tickets were purely advisory: you do have to go into designated gates, so we were behind the goals and arrived 45 minutes early so as to find a good place to stand. Actually I used to watch Arsenal in the 'Eighties and then the places behind the goal were standing only, so in that respect it was the same.  The season ticket holders arrived late: they sit in the best seats and I suppose their seat's locations must be honoured.

Maccabi and HaPoel share the same stadium: Bloomfield, which is actually a rather nice stadium. It seats 20 or 30,000 and there are good views from all over. I used to live nearby and my son Noam studies the bassoon at a music centre next door.

Because this was a HaPoel home game, most of the seats were allocated to HaPoel.  However, there was a clearly pre-arranged effort by Maccabi fans to break the allocation. Large numbers had bought tickets for the seating areas adjacent to the area allocated to Maccabi fans.  I know it was pre-arranged because most of them wore white: there was no indication that they were Maccabi fans until a little before the game when they suddenly surged over to the side next to the Maccabi fans, forcing the police to separate them from the HaPoel fans and resulting in at least one HaPoel fan trying (unsuccessfully) to pick a fight. On the other side from where we stood, someone was arrested but I didn't see what for.

The Maccabi fans behind the blue fence are actually in an area meant to separate the rival fans.  It was supposed to be empty.

A couple of minutes before the game started, the Maccabi fans let off massive yellow smoke bombs (Maccabi's colours are Yellow and Blue). The Turkish team Galatasaray was recently fined by UEFA because fans let off smoke bombs at Arsenal and I knew that this is a transgression.

Smoke bomb at the Tel Aviv derby

My friend is a physician and he was worried about the affect the smoke would have on the fan's lungs; we were far away and unaffected by the smoke.

Smoke bomb dissipating

After that things were fairly normal.  The chanting was better then when I saw HaPoel Beer Sheva and the game was good. Maccabi were attacking the other end of the pitch from where we stood, and dominated the game, except that HaPoel made one good counter attack and scored against the run of play.  A few minutes later there was an incident in the HaPoel penalty box and a Maccabi player fell over.  I was too far away to see what happened and, annoyingly, live football doesn't feature action replays.  There was a penalty and Eran Zahavi scored.
I didn't see what happened next but around me I head people muttering that Zahavi had been warned about his goal celebrations, while others imitated him - which enabled me to figure out what happened.  It seems that Zahavi's "trade mark" goal celebration is to hold his hands as if they were pistols making shots: just like a child might.  Around me people made pretend guns with their hands and went "piu piu",which is the sound Israeli children make as a gun noise.

Apparently Zahavi aimed his pretend pistols at the HaPoel fans. A few minutes later, as he went to take a penalty a HaPoel fan ran into the pitch and attacked him. It looked like Zahavi defended himself (it was all very fast and far away) but after the fan was arrested, Zahavi was shown a red card for hitting the fan.

The Maccabi fans were incensed: their star was attacked and then the attacker was rewarded by seeing him sent off! Zahavi didn't just walk off, he angrily ran at the referee and a crowd of Maccabi players pushed round the referee.  The referee walked away but if he had stood his ground I think he could have gotten knocked over.
The exit from the pitch was at the other end: where all the HaPoel fans were standing.  Police took Zahavi off, and bottles were thrown at him (about 5). I think there was an attempt to renew the game, but within seconds more balding men, this time I think they were angry Macabbi fans, ran onto the pitch.  Mostly they weren't attacking anyone,  though some seemed to want to run at the HaPoel fans, basically they mostly they were furious about Zahavi being sent off.
Well that was it. The fans were tackled by police and taken away.  The game halted and the players left the pitch, We stood around wondering what to do: would it get violent?  It didn't look like it. Would the game resume?  Would we get our money back if it didn't?
The Guardian says there was fighting "near the city courthouse". There is a court a kilometer away on Shoken street and maybe the arrested fans were taken there, but there was no trouble outside the stadium. I nearly stepped in police horseshit on the way out (I saw two policemen on horseback).  They should make them pick up the shit like dog owners do.
By the way all the invading fans seemed to have shaven heads.  Israel has a high percentage of balding men and the fashion is for them to shave all their hair off. This seems to apply to the tema's management as well. Maccabi's manager is Jordi Cruyff, son of the  Dutch legend.

BBC coverage
The Jerusalem Post has the full incident: http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Sports/Disgrace-for-Israeli-soccer-as-hooligan-storms-pitch-attacks-Maccabi-Tel-Aviv-player-380693