Northern Ireland v Israel

FACTFILE ISRAEL

Words Liam Blackburn

was in the last title-winning side that Liverpool had and scored 22 goals in 97 games for the club, and he would also play for Tottenham and Watford. » » Rosenthal, who won 60 caps, is one of four Israelis to have made over a century of Premier League appearances, the other three being ex-Manchester City, Celtic and West Ham midfielder Eyal Berkovic, Ben Haim and Benayoun. » » That quartet have all featured for Israel in European qualifiers and they have been playing regularly within the continent since 1991. Full UEFA membership would arrive in 1994, the year after Israel recorded a memorable 3-2 success over France. » » Israel finished the Euro 2000 qualifiers in second place in their group, behind Spain, but they missed out on a place in the finals due to an 8-0 aggregate loss in a play-off to Denmark across two legs. That is as close as Israel have come to qualifying for a Euros. » » Northern Ireland famously met Israel in their final World Cup 1982 qualifier. Gerry Armstrong scored the first half goal in front of 40,000 spectators to send Northern Ireland to the tournament in Spain. It is one of three Northern Ireland victories over the Israelis. Yet Israel have not lost any of their previous four encounters against Northern Ireland, whose last victory over them came in a 1984 friendly. » » Most of the current national squad play in the Israeli Premier League, with Hapoel Be’er Sheva, Maccabi Haifa and Maccabi Tel Aviv all well represented. » » In May Hapoel were crowned champions for the third successive season. A defeat to Tel Aviv in that month was the first they had suffered at home in the division since moving to Turner Stadium three seasons earlier.

» » Israel are returning to Belfast for the first time since 2013 as a transitional team with a new head coach and an inexperienced squad. » » Only three of the players who started that 2-0 victory in March five years ago are in Andreas Herzog’s group today, and the current squad features just five players with 20 or more caps. » » Of those who played eight or more World Cup 2018 qualifiers, only striker Tomer Hemed remains and ex-Chelsea pair Yossi Benayoun and Tal Ben Haim, the country’s two most capped players, are not part of Herzog’s first squad. » » Herzog will hope that the likes of exciting teenager Manor Solomon can come through and lead the next generation as they look to qualify for future European Championships and World Cups, having not graced either finals since 1970. » » Affiliated with FIFA since 1929, a team from the newly-created state of Israel toured the United States in 1948 shortly after the War of Independence. » » Between 1956 and 1974 Israel were part of the Asian Football Confederation and they won the AFC Asian Cup as hosts in 1964. It was through the Asian qualifying route that they progressed to the 1970 World Cup, which remains their lone appearance at the global tournament. » » At the competition in Mexico, Israel were in a difficult group featuring Uruguay, Sweden and Italy. And the Israelis did not disgrace themselves, drawing with both Sweden and Italy after losing the opening game 2-0 to Uruguay. » » Mordechai Spiegler, a former Paris Saint- Germain forward, remains the only man to have scored a World Cup goal for Israel and he is still the country’s all-time leading scorer. » » In more recent times a number of Israel’s best footballers have been in England for part of their club careers. Ronnie Rosenthal, born in Haifa,

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