With a squad that features Arabic, Jewish, Christian and Bedouin players, gas-company sponsored club “Dor Alon” have won the Israeli national minifootball championship in style. This is their inspiring story of high-octane football and multicultural cooperation.
“Dor Alon” is an Israeli energy company with a national chain of service stations. Workers for the company, including station attendants, tank-truck drivers as well as regional managers – have come together to form the squad of the company’s official minifootball team, simply named “Dor Alon” after their sponsor and employer.
Recently, the “Dor Alon” gang were crowned Israeli minifootball champions after a very impressive campaign in which they beat several top-ranked opponents over a period of 4 weeks. To celebrate the win, their gas-company bosses ran a full-page ad in Israel’s top daily newspaper.
But that’s only half the story. What’s interesting about this team is the variety of multicultural backgrounds of its players: some are Israeli Jews. Some are Muslim and Christian Arabs from the villages of Northern Israel. Others are members of Bedouin tribes from the Southern desert. Because they work for a national company, and everyone, everywhere needs to fill up their tanks with gas now an then, this unique team relies on the cooperation between different cultures and religions to get the job done – in this case: score goals and win minifootball matches.
Says skipper Kfir Revivo: “The secret of our success is friendship and spirit – the guys all work together and give 100% for the good of the team. We’ve been playing together for years and that’s why we’re good.”
Some 2,000 amateur players from 186 teams participated in the 3rd annual Israeli national minifootball championship, held in memory of former Liverpool and Israeli international Avi Cohen who died in a motorcycle accident in 2010. The tournament was backed by the Ministry of Culture and Sports, as well as the Toto (national sports betting council) and several other organizations and sponsors.
The project is run by the non-profit “Football State”, which also serves as the Israeli minifootball association. Games are played without the help of referees, in an effort to promote conflict resolution and personal responsibility among players, with a zero-tolerance attitude towards violence and racism. No prizes are given, to ensure that all games are played “just for fun”.
Adds Revivo: “The ‘Football State’ tournaments are an amazing experience for amateur players of every age who want to play for pure fun”.
Cosmopolitan all-stars “Dor Alon” beat out some very stiff competition in the final round of 18, which was played on 3 different pitches in Tel-Aviv over one glorious day. These include team “ZENIT” which represented the Russian-speaking sector and FC Zenit Saint Petersburg fans in Israel. Strong side “Yisgav” proved you can play excellent football while sporting a skullcap and full beard – their squad consists of devout orthodox Jews. “Qalansawa Stars” are Muslim Arabs, “Gilboa” are strict vegetarians, “ASA Ben Gurion” are all engineering students from B.G. University and the “Yarmut” squad features combat air-force pilots.
Another interesting club is “The Cohens” which is made up entirely of friends and family members of the championships’ name-sake – the late Avi Cohen. And finally, “The Simo Project” is a very spirited side consisting of stylish hair-salon customers – Simo, the captain, coach and manager, is a hair-stylist from Netanya, specializing in Ronaldo-inspired cuts.
It was Simo’s lads who ultimately lost to “Dor Alon” in the final game, 5:2. Better luck next year!