State Of Israeli Football Thru My TV Watching Habbits
I am big football (a.k.a soccer) fan. I love to play, I had a season ticket for many years for Maccabi Tel Aviv’s home game (I’ve been their fan for more than 30 years), and recently also coach my oldest son at AYSO which is something I highly recommend doing. It is very fun, rewarding and bonding.
Shortly after we moved to the US more than 6 years ago, we got our house connected to the Israeli Network. It is a pretty expensive premium TV channel ($20/month) and the programs are not that interesting (mainly news, politics, Israeli soap operas and reality tv) but the channel has the broadcasting rights for the Israeli Premier League games, and that was the main motivation for me to get connected.
In the first 3 years for our live in the US, I used to wake up early on Saturday morning and sit for 2 hours to watch the game of my beloved team. Using the DVR was not even an option back then since my mentality said that a game had to be watched live. There were a few games that were not broadcasted on the Israeli Network due to rights issues and I found myself watching games on a laptop in terrible quality on sites like Tapuz and others (imagine a guy who points a webcam at a TV and provides his own commentary using the microphone).
The last 3 years have been a disaster. My team sucks. And it is getting worse and worse every year. This led me to completly change the way I watch Israeli football. First, I started DVRing the games and watched them late at night once I am done with family activities during the day. This did not last much. I quickly switch from normal speed to a x4 speed which basically has 2 advantages:
- The game suddenly looks like it is an English Premier League / Spanish La Liga game. You can see players that are actually running!
- You don’t hear the terrible commentary.
That did not last as well. Even at the x4 speed I quickly got bored since no goals were scored, and the ball was not even getting close to the 16 meters box. Nothing was really happening at these games.
So, I increased the speed to x15, and then to x60 and later on to x300. Yes, you can not really see much when watching at this speed, but honestly, there was nothing to see. I simply kept my eyes focused on the upper left corner where the score/time label is and waited for the label to change. Once it changed, I would switch back to normal speed, rewind 30 seconds, watch the goal re-run and speed again to x300.
This year, since my team looks really pathetic, I have completely stopped doing that. I switched from wathing the full 90 minute games to watching only the Weekends Highlights show. But the truth is that the other teams in this league do not play much better compared to Maccabi, and all the games looks boring when watching at normal speed. So, the latest for me is that now I am watching the highlights show at x60 speed.
This is in a nutshall the state of Israeli football in 2009 from my point of view. And If you are one of those who look at FIFA ranking and thinks it tells a true story, you might want to think twice.
I would like to thanks my friend Roy Klieger who used to sit next to me at Maccabi’s home games for many years for the inspiration. A note he sent me regarding our team’s pathetic situation led me to turn a reply email into a post.
