MILAN – The city of Beersheba was once a small town in the middle of the Negev desert in Southern Israel. It is now a thriving city, the arid desert giving way to the purple irises of the Duda’im forest.
Beersheba is home to CyberSpark, a government initiative aiming to become the world’s ground zero in the field of IT security, and Hapoel Be’er Sheva – the reigning champions of the Israeli Premier League and Inter’s upcoming opponents in the Europa League.
Like the desert sand mingling with the last patches of fertile ground, the two entities’ have more in common than you might think. While the first is the realm of academics and entrepreneurs and the second is a football club blazing a trail of ethnic and religious integration, both are linked by one woman: Alona Barkat.
The wife of the president of the BRM Group, a company that manages private equity funds and has invested in CyberSpark, Barkat spent years living in California’s Silicon Valley, working in publishing, tech research and public affairs before returning to her homeland with a burning ambition: to save Hapoel Be’er Sheva from spiralling debts and turn it into a model football club which serves the local community.
It was seemingly a tall order, the well-to-do, straight-laced Barkat returning to a land of stark contrasts and entering an industry – football – that has traditionally been reticent to accept women in positions of power.
Yet it is for exactly this reason that Hapoel’s success is twofold.
It is the success of a woman who has managed to restore a semblance of balance to a city at the heart of Operation Yaov in 1948, when Israel drove all Egyptian troops out of Negev and secured borders with the Palestinian territories while welcoming Jews from the Arab countries, Sephardi Jews and Russian Jews, who would go on to make the city the chess capital of the world.
Football is now shining the international spotlight on Beersheba, the “city of the seven wells” according to Genesis. Having the chance to play at the Scala del Calcio is a proud moment for Barkat and the Hapoel fans, many of whom are descendants of the Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula during the Catholic Reconquista.
European football is just reward for Hapoel’s hard work on the pitch in recent years. Barak Bakhar’s side had to fend off a strong domestic challenge from Maccabi Tel Aviv to seal qualification to the Champions League preliminary rounds, then came within touching distance of the group stages before succumbing to the experienced Scots of Celtic Glasgow.
Bakhar – who spent most of his playing career at Israeli outfit Ironi Kiryat Shmona – has a simple, effective style. He favours a 4-4-2 system and likes to get the wingers and full-backs as involved as possible. Indeed, it was a substantial blow to lose pacey left-back Ofir Davidzada to Belgian side Genk in the closing stages of the summer transfer window.
Teamwork is at the heart of the Hapoel style, with centre-forward Anthony Nwakaeme acting as the pivot and dictating the tempo of his side’s play, often clearing the way for fellow Nigerian John Ogu – a midfielder as creative as he can be destructive – to look for goal with his trusty right foot.
Nwakaeme and Ogu are not the only African players to have played for Hapoel. The late Zambian forward Chaswe Nsofwa will be forever associated with the club after he died from a cardiac arrest during a training match in 2007, just a few days after Sevilla defender Antonio Puerta had suffered the same fate. Nsofwa’s No.6 was retired by the club following the tragedy.
As it happened, 2007 would prove to be the turning point in Hapoel Be’er Sheva’s fortunes on the pitch, and a city of contrasts – joy and pain, desert and forest, cultures and religions – has beamed with pride ever since.
Aniello Luciano
