The Blizzard: Maccabi vs Hapoel, 1928
Football Ramble
Stak Production
4.6 • 9.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2019
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today’s episode of Greatest Games, in association with The Blizzard, we’re joined by Nicholas Blincoe, the author of ‘More Noble Than War: A Football History of Israel and Palestine.’ We’re heading to that part of the world for today’s match as we take a look at the 1928 Tel Aviv Derby, where Maccabi took on Hapoel for the first time.
In these clubs’ formative years, football was an entirely different proposition in Israel-Palestine. Initially seen as too individualistic a sport, it was gradually introduced by the British military and helped by mass immigration of younger people from Austro-Hungarian cities after the First World War. Jonathan, Marcus and Nicholas discuss the background around the two sides, each formed of an entirely different demographic, as well as the 3-0 Maccabi win and its historical significance.
For more stories from the annals of football history, visit www.theblizzard.co.uk to explore their archives that contain over 700 articles of stories just like this one!
Our live tour starts very soon! Join us at venues across England, Europe, USA and Canada for Football Ramble Live - expect all your old favourites (including Pete Donaldson), brand new games and a load of laughs. Get your tickets now at ramblelive.com!
Fancy getting in touch? Email us at blizzard@footballrambledaily.com or find us social media— just search 'Football Ramble Daily'.
***Please take the time to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your pods. It means a great deal to the show and will make it easier for other potential listeners to find us. Thanks!***
The Football Ramble, the original and best football podcast. Brand new podcasts every single weekday throughout the Premier League season and every day throughout the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
No cliches. No ex-pros like Peter Crouch or The Rest is Football. Just the funniest football conversation out there. Your guardian for the season, daily not weekly. Stick to the Ramble, totally.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody and welcome to the greatest games on football ramble daily in association |
| 0:14.0 | with the Blizzard today with Jonathan and myself. We have Nicholas Blinco author at writer |
| 0:20.3 | of the most recently published More Noble than War, a soccer history of Israel, Palestine, |
| 0:26.0 | Nicholas, pleasure to have you here. Really good to be here. Now you've gone for the most niche game |
| 0:32.0 | so far that we've had on this particular podcast. Well it's not niche if you're Israeli. |
| 0:36.4 | Ex is the big game. And there's the point everybody. You've gone for, we go back to 1928, the |
| 0:44.6 | Lord Montspan's would Tel Aviv Darby between Macabee and Happowell. Over to you Nicholas, |
| 0:51.1 | are we honest with you? I don't know much about this at all. Well the reason that this match |
| 0:58.5 | is such a kind of conflict in itself is that the Happowell team, which at the time we're called |
| 1:05.1 | Al-Ambi, which is a street in Tel Aviv, Al-Ambi had split with Macabee so they're actually |
| 1:10.2 | Macabee's youth team and they got so angry with the Macabee organisation that they'd first split |
| 1:17.2 | and then they signed up with the rival socialist trade union movement which is they have a |
| 1:23.1 | sport association called Happowell which means the workers in Israel and they become the kind of |
| 1:28.6 | flagship socialist team. So Macabee which was really the team of the bosses, it was the team of |
| 1:35.6 | shop owners, builders, property magnets, they kind of, they kind of old guard or the core of Tel Aviv |
| 1:43.9 | which was a new city but it was already 30 years old so it had these, this kind of old guard there, |
| 1:49.6 | they set up the Macabee and then the workers who kept going on strike and arguing with them, |
| 1:57.1 | signed up their youth team and it just became a really, really rival socialist conflict. They |
| 2:02.4 | didn't even play each other at all for two years. So it took quite a lot of organisation even to |
| 2:09.6 | get the first Tel Aviv derby off the ground. Do you want to explain a little bit about the |
| 2:14.3 | Macabee movement and sort of its ideals and why I guess from a very start there's this politicised |
| 2:24.2 | aspect to sport in Palestine? Yeah, well the Macabee wasn't originally called the Macabee, it was |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Stak Production, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Stak Production and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.