There is nothing Israelis love more than football.
Every bar, beach club, and park in Tel Aviv is packed with fans draped in the flags of their favorite teams. From my apartment in central Tel Aviv, I can hear cheers erupt whenever someone scores. Lionel Messi is practically a household name in Israel, and Charles Clore Park has become a sea of Argentinian flags. Add Israel’s large British and French communities, and you can feel the electricity that the World Cup brings to this country.
The irony is that while Israelis, and Jews more broadly, are passionate football fans, there are remarkably few Jewish players competing on the world’s biggest stage.
A joke I heard circulating among journalists was that Jewish media had become so desperate to find a Jewish angle to the World Cup that they would connect it to almost anything.
The contributions of Jews to sports like baseball and basketball are well known, but fewer people actually know the deep history behind Jews and soccer, aka European football. In fact, Jewish involvement in football has existed since leagues’ inception.
Jews push growth of football in pre-Holocaust Europe
Before the Holocaust, Jewish communities were among the driving forces behind football’s growth in Central Europe. As players, club founders, owners, coaches, administrators, journalists, physicians, and supporters, they helped shape many of the clubs, institutions, and ideas that influenced the modern game.
In cities like Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Berlin, and Amsterdam, football became deeply intertwined with vibrant Jewish communities.
One of the greatest examples was Hakoah Vienna. Founded in 1909, Hakoah, meaning “strength” in Hebrew, was far more than a football club. At a time when antisemitic stereotypes portrayed Jews as physically weak and incapable of athletic achievement, Hakoah became a powerful symbol of Jewish confidence, excellence, and pride. The club was closely associated with the Zionist movement and attracted many of Vienna’s Jewish elite. Before it was shut down by the Nazis in 1938, Hakoah had produced several Olympic athletes and became famous for fielding one of history’s most successful all-Jewish football teams.
The club won the Austrian championship in 1925, toured Europe and North America before packed crowds, and inspired Jewish sports clubs around the world. For countless young Jews, Hakoah represented something revolutionary: the idea that Jews could be both proud of their identity and physically strong.
Hungary tells a similar story. Jewish players, administrators, and businessmen helped shape Hungarian football. One of the country’s most successful clubs, MTK Budapest, was closely associated with Budapest’s Jewish community and became a powerhouse of European football. While MTK was not exclusively Jewish, many of its players, leaders, and supporters came from the city’s Jewish community.
Some of football’s greatest minds also came from Jewish backgrounds. Béla Guttmann, who would later win two European Cups with Benfica and influence generations of coaches, survived the Holocaust after escaping forced labor. Ernő Egri Erbstein, another Hungarian Jew, fled Fascist Italy after antisemitic racial laws drove him out. After the war, he returned to build the legendary Grande Torino, one of the greatest club sides Europe had ever seen before the tragic Superga air disaster.
Then there was Julius Hirsch who was a World War I veteran and who proudly represented Germany on the football pitch. His service to his country meant nothing once the Nazis came to power. He was expelled from German football simply because he was Jewish, deported to Auschwitz, and murdered.
Nazis attempted to erase Jewish impact on European society
When people think about the Holocaust, especially within the Jewish community, they rightly think about the six million Jews who were murdered. What is often forgotten is that the Nazis were not simply trying to kill Jews, they were trying to erase Jewish civilization and every contribution Jews had made to European society.
Long before the extermination camps reached their full horror, the Nazis had already begun erasing Jews from the world of sport. Jewish athletes were expelled from their clubs, sporting organizations were dismantled, stadiums and clubhouses were confiscated, and careers that had taken a lifetime to build disappeared almost overnight. Thousands of Jewish football players, coaches, administrators, journalists, doctors, and supporters were murdered or forced into exile, leaving behind empty stadiums, broken communities, and a legacy that was almost lost to history.
Learning this history has given me an entirely new appreciation for the sport. It also makes me wonder what Jewish representation in football might look like today had an entire generation not been robbed of the chance to compete, coach, and inspire those who came after them.
So while I continue to soak up the excitement surrounding the World Cup, I’ll also be thinking about the forgotten Jewish communities that helped build the beautiful game. Their story deserves to be remembered, not just because they were Jewish, but because they helped shape a sport that now unites billions of people around the world.
The writer is the co-founder and CEO of Social Lite Creative, a digital marketing firm that specializes in geopolitics.