כדורגלן ישראלי: ממעמד מדומיין לסטטוס

During the first and second decades following the establishment of the State of Israel, football players lacked status; they were considered amateurs and the game of football (referred to as “soccer” in the United States) was greatly subjected to political management. Real and comprehensive status was not available to individuals who wished to pursue a career in football or make a living from doing so. Even when achieving status in the world of football became more possible later on, equal opportunities were greatly lacking. In their article on the impact of ethnicity from the early 1980s, Ephraim Yaar and Moshe Semyonov (1982) claimed that in Israel, Ashkenazi Jews had a greater chance of being recognized as a professional football player than their Sephardi counterparts. The aim of this article is twofold: To examine the evolution of the status of Israeli footballers, while assessing the elimination of the role that ethnicity played in Israeli football in the past. This article argues that today, as in many other countries, Israeli footballers are given relative autonomy, provided by the political-economical-cultural surroundings. Additionally, over time, the acquiring of status as an Israeli footballer has become “colorblind,” no longer differentiating between country of origin and other ethnic aspects.