Hapoel Tirat HaCarmel

Five hundred seats is not many, and the Municipal Stadium in Tirat Carmel has rarely needed more: Hapoel Tirat HaCarmel plays its football at a level where the ground is never the story, only the setting. The club that uses it now is not, strictly, the one that first took the field there. That earlier side went into decline through the early 1990s, was relegated under manager Eli Gutman after finishing bottom of the second tier in 1990–91, dropped further into Liga Gimel, failed to climb back out, and folded in the mid-1990s. Tirat Carmel went without a senior club for close to two decades before Shimon Peretz and Idan Elias put one back together in 2013, entering it in Liga Gimel Samaria at the bottom of the pyramid.

The refounding mattered locally for one fixture in particular. The city derby against Maccabi Tirat HaCarmel had not been played in 19 years, and it returned in the 2013–14 season as the clearest sign that something interrupted had started again.

What was lost in 1990s is easy to understate from that starting point in Liga Gimel. The original Hapoel Tirat HaCarmel, known to supporters as HaAdomim for their black-and-red colours, spent 12 seasons in the second tier and reached fourth place twice, in 1971–72 and 1972–73. Its honours board holds four Liga Alef titles, won in 1954–55, 1968–69, 1976–77 and 1988–89, plus a Liga Bet title in 1962–63.

Among those who wore the shirt, Idan Weitzman left the clearest mark beyond Tirat Carmel: in 2013 he became the first Israeli footballer to play in the Azerbaijan Premier League.