'Many fans were killed': Haifa play through pain

Players’ family and friends have been victims of horror yet Israel's best side return to face Villarrealin Cyprus today

- Jacob Steinberg

Football feels like an irrelevance at Maccabi Haifa’s hotel in Larnaca. The players, coaches and staff members milling around the lobby are meant to be thinking about facing Villarreal in the Europa League but this is not a normal situation. This is a community in shock, traumatised by Hamas murdering 1,400 Israelis and taking over 240 hostages into Gaza, and it is hard to focus. “Usually you think about the game, the tactics,” says Sean Goldberg, the Haifa defender. “But the mind is not here.”

Haifa should not be here. There has been no football in Israel since the horror of 7 October and trauma hangs over the country’s best side. Elad Ashkenazi, the team’s mental coach, wonders how to lift the squad’s morale and fear lingers in the air when Uri Harel, a fitness coach, talks about his 29-year-old son leaving his job as a lawyer to join up with the army.

The atmosphere is heavier still when Gil Ofek, who looks after the team’s schedule, says that his 71-year-old father survived an assault on his kibbutz only by hiding in a shelter for 36 hours. Dror Shimshon, another fitness coach, is ushered over to tell the story of his 22-year-old son somehow escaping the Nova music festival.

But while domestic football in Israel has paused, European competition goes on. Maccabi Tel Aviv, who are in the Europa Conference League, have an away game against FC Zorya Luhansk on Thursday, while Haifa have travelled to Cyprus to play a home game against Villarreal on neutral territory.