Today, I will write about one of the things that bothers me the most in Israeli Soccer. You may remember what I wrote about the 8^th round of the cup. Here are some other things that bother me, and I hope, also bother other people.

• There are no rules as to team uniforms. Some teams go through 5 or 6 uniforms a year. I know that there are home and away uniforms, but I think that at the beginning of the year, a team should decide on its 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd uniforms with no changing allowed during the season. I have noticed that teams like Arsenal, AC Milam, Inter Milan, Juventus, Sampdoria, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and many other teams have had the same (home) uniforms since anyone can remember. This also hurts merchandise selling because as soon as you buy you teams uniform, they don't wear it anymore. Without merchandise selling, teams stay poor, and that is one of the reasons that Israeli teams fail in European Cups.
• There is no set time for games to start. The heads of the IFA (Israel Football Association) say that the reason for this is: The IFA gave each team the freedom to decide when to play each game. Often, there are 2 or 3 games on Friday (which is OK because some teams want to draw religious Jews to stadiums and they don't come on Saturday). But, the Saturday games start at different hours. On an average Saturday, 3 games start at 14:30, 2 start at 15:00 and the televised game starts at 17:15. This also causes for a lack of tradition, which is such a good part of English football. For example, in Scotland, there is a fanazine called "It's 16:30 and we are down 2-0". Everyone knows that the game starts at 3 o'clock and 16:30 is about the 70^th minute. I'd like to see that in Israel. Well, on second thought, there are no fanazines here.
• Still connected to the above comment, the IFA lets the television decide when to play one of the games. Is the TV schedule so tight that they have to show the game live at 17:15? Earlier this year, the televised game would start at 17:45. If the TV said that game had to be at 4:00 A.M., would the IFA agree?
• Still connected to above, the game times are only announced in the Thursday newspapers. For example,if a game in Beit She'an starts at 14:00 on Friday, I have to get a special release from school, and my dad has to take half a day of work. Sometimes, if he doesn't know this until Thursday, he can't get off work. In the American leagues, all game times are announces before the season ever starts.
• The heads of the IFA are plain rude. Any criticism aimed at them is immediately made to look like nonsense. Example: When asked why the cup draws are not held on the Friday, immediately after the last round, the reply was: "That's not true". Even though the question is completely legitimate and the draws are never held on the Friday after the draw.
• In the last few years, more and more racist cries are heard in Israeli crowds. When a player with dark skin gets the ball, immediately the crowd starts yelling "oo oo oo oo" (it's supposed to be a monkey sound). The IFA doesn't do anything to stop it. When Beitar Jerusalem played Club Brugge in this year's UEFA Cup, the crowd made those stupid noises annd the team was fined by UEFA. I think Beitar can find better ways to spend that money.
  As always, the most amazing quote about the subject belongs to Gavri Levi, chairman of the IFA: "There is no connection between the fact that there are no Africans in the league and the racist noises from the crowd. These noises don't have a racist purpose. They are normal disparaging remarks (haktanot yariv) towards other teams. I think fines are for UEFA and not for the leagues themselves. I repeat there is no reason to look for reasons to fine teams."
• The refereeing in Israel is tilted towards the "big" teams (Beitar Jerusalem, Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Haifa). Last year Beit She'an received 2 penalties the whole year (30 games). More on this in a later column.