Israel Football League thrives due to support of Kraft, CC ’63

JERUSALEM—In this part of the world, “football” usually refers to a sport involving yellow cards, sweepers, and men taking their shirts off after scoring a goal. Thanks largely to Robert Kraft, CC ’63, however, Israelis can now think about quarterbacks, touchdowns, and John Madden when they hear the word.

You may have seen his name around campus or on ESPN. The Columbia football team competes on Robert K. Kraft Field at the northern tip of Manhattan. The Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life on 115th Street houses the Columbia/Barnard Hillel. Most famously, though, the well-known Columbia graduate owns the NFL’s New England Patriots.

Football-savvy Americans know all about Kraft’s involvement in professional and collegiate ball in the States, but they may be unaware that an entire foreign league bears his name: the Kraft Family Israel Football League. Three years old and seven teams strong, the IFL has relied on Kraft’s involvement and funding since its inauguration.

“Football’s been in Israel for about 15-20 years, but it was exclusively flag football for a long time,” Uriel Sturm, the league’s commissioner, said. About five years ago, the country’s official football authority banded together behind increasing demand for organized tackle football, and a four-team league was established for the 2007-2008 season. The IFL has expanded rapidly and could contain as many as 10 teams by next season.

“Robert Kraft at first was a little bit wary that football would catch on here. He thought we had a very good thing going with the flag football, but he said yeah, I’ll help you out a little and try to start it and we’ll see where it goes,” Sturm said. “Mr. Kraft has seen the growth of the league and he’s continued to up his contribution since its inception because he sees that this is something that could really catch on throughout the country. He’s really excited about it now.”

Indeed, his name is also attached to the Kraft Family Stadium in Jerusalem, a 70-yard, astroturf field without field-goal posts that serves as the league’s main venue but also attests to the high school-like atmosphere that can define the games. Field goals are in fact possible—officials stand by the soccer goals and determine whether or not the football crosses between the posts—but few teams make the effort, and even extra point attempts are rare. The league is working on ordering a set of collapsible uprights from a U.S.-based company and should have them by next season.

Except for the late-round playoff games, which can draw huge weekend crowds, the competitions generally produce an intimate, friendly, and largely American group of fans. Hot pizza and cold beer is sold along the sidelines. Children descend on the playing field and toss a football around during halftime. And at a recent regular-season game between the crosstown rivals Jerusalem Kings and Jerusalem Lions, an entire squad from Tel Aviv showed up in team sweatshirts to enjoy the spectacle and scout out a potential playoff opponent.

“I went to Michigan, so I’m used to football on a big scale,” Shira Caputo said, who came to the game to cheer on a friend and could not have found herself farther from Ann Arbor. “It’s a nice outlet for Anglos, in terms of staying in touch with our culture.” Caputo moved to Israel recently after growing up on Long Island.

The Israeli sports scene is dominated by the country’s premier soccer and basketball leagues, which both have teams that also compete against top European clubs.

“Sports in this country, amateur sports, aren’t given the same type of broad-market coverage that they may be in North America,” Sturm said. “There isn’t a university or college sports culture here.”

In many ways, the IFL is building infrastructure and support for football from the ground up. Equipment, coaching, stadiums, insurance, recruiting—no mechanism for dealing with any of these new issues existed in the past. But the league administration, with initiatives such as a vacation football camp for high school students, is placing a special focus on developing a national attraction for the sport.

“My dream is that in 10 years, Israeli children will have the option of playing football in their mindsets the same way they have an option to play soccer or basketball or any other sport,” Sturm said. “I think football fits the Israeli mentality of thinking very well, as I’ve seen in action, and also from a theoretical perspective it’s a very aggressive sport, it’s a very tactical sport, and those are two characteristics that Israelis blend very well together.”

Although Americans living here may have founded the IFL, local interest is growing. “Seventy percent of the league is ‘Israeli Israeli,’ meaning they don’t have any American roots, they never lived in America, they really learned the sport exclusively from learning how to play in Israel and from growing to love the sport in Israel,” Sturm said. “That’s sort of what we’re trying to build.”

Americans and Israelis are not the only nationalities represented on the league’s rosters, however. Leib Bolel, a fullback and offensive captain on the Jerusalem Kings, originally hails from Gateshead, England, and grew up playing rugby.

“It [the IFL] caters to everyone,” he said. “You have Russian immigrants, you have a couple of Palestinians, you’ve got quite a few Israelis. You see the connection between different walks of life bonding very well together, and it all comes down to football.”

The league administration works day and night on the wrinkles, but a simple love of the game is what really keeps the wheels rolling week after week. Volunteer coaches, officials, and sideline staff face trial by fire with each new game. Some players and coaches have high school or even college football experience from the States. Most don’t.

Unlike the local soccer and basketball leagues, the IFL operates in English. P.A. announcements, stadium ads, uniform names—America’s influence is evident. But the language barrier is not serious. “Slowly you pick it up,” Sturm said. “The field language is a language of its own almost. You know the play because you’ve studied the playbook, and the playbook is based on pictures…yeah, the language is English, but it’s more football.”

In so many ways, the league’s grassroots status presents a study in contradictions. On the one hand, the field is 70 yards in length and lacks uprights. On the other, Kraft Stadium has two sets of bleachers, a press box, and ads on the surrounding fences. (In fact, most of the league’s team names carry rather endearing sponsorships, such as the Tel Aviv “Mike’s Place” Sabres, supported by a beachfront American-style sports bar, and the Jerusalem “Papagaio” Kings, who are backed by a Brazilian steakhouse.) And although the teams only play eight a side and gameplay is rife with safeties and missed connections, the administration is thrilled about the live national television coverage of last weekend’s championship game.

Whether or not the IFL carries an amateur feel at times, it’s clear that the league is in the midst of an explosive expansionary phase and would not look the same without Kraft’s generous assistance. From Manhattan to New England and all the way to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Beer Sheva, the former Columbia trustee continues to make a habit of sharing his love of football with the masses.

The league commissioner is happy with the inroads football has been forging in Israel, but does not plan to rest easily anytime soon.

“It’s always going to be a work in progress,” he said. “At this stage we’re really on the brink of something that could explode.”