by Yoni Ginsberg

Futbol is nothing without the little guy. That hometown team, or small nation which achieves immense success without Manchester City’s bankroll or Real Madrid’s players. Turkey during the ’06 World Cup, Uruguay this year, as well as various small clubs that succeed in European competition. For me, that little guy is everything. Hapoel Tel Aviv, my small hometown club.

Although considered by its fans in their chants as an “empire” we are but a small Israeli side with a few known players (Ben Sahar and Nigerian keeper Vincent Enyeama) and a small budget. Therefore, when we won the domestic double last season, we celebrated. We celebrated hard. We were automatically placed in the second qualifying round in the Champions League in which we met Željezni?ar, a small Bosnian team, whom we quietly demolished 6-0 on aggregate. However, next came a tougher challenge – FK Aktobe, the Kazakhstani champions.

In the first leg of the two leg tie, we were beaten 1-0 in Kazakhstan from a penalty that was awarded for a hand ball in the area. Although we were favorites to move on to the next round we had a difficult task ahead of us- beating a team that would come to Tel Aviv to play defensively and try to protect its one goal advantage.  On Tuesday, we achieved that task and have positioned ourselves one step closer to playing against teams like Chelsea and Inter Milan. And we did it in style.

Playing in a sold out Bloomfield Stadium, the Red Devils came out strong scoring 3 goals in the first half. Eran Zahavi, Ben Sahar (ex Chelsea, QPR, and Espanyol), and an own goal by Aktobe’s Ba all contributed to my teams excellent first half showing. Sadly, the second half wasn’t as exciting with Aktobe scoring their only goal of the match in the 89th minute.

This game is more than just a small step forward for a tiny club. This victory guarantees that the club will receive in excess of 20 million New Israeli Shekels ($5 million) which for such a club is a huge sum of money. In the playoff round, one before the group stages and Hapoel’s next round they will be drawn with teams like Partizan Belgrade and Red Bull Salzburg. Hopefully my little hometown team will achieve big league fame and glory. 1L!