12p.co.il
Title
.:: MACCABI TEL AVIV'S FANATIC GROUP SINCE 2000 ארגון אוהדי מכבי תל אביב משנת ::.
Description
The 12th player was founded by a number of fans from gate 11 in 2000' year.
The founders of the 12th player had it with the image that was seen by different fans towards the crowd of Maccabi Tel-Aviv. This image was a spoiled crowd that cheers the team on only when the team succeeds and curses when the team loses. A crowd without any scenery, without any decoration in the games, with no cheering resources, a crowd that doesn’t cheer 90 minutes (even when the team wins), and a crowd that lacks variety and creativity in it’s songs.
The 12th player is an organization that sees cheering 90 minutes never mind the score as the best way to act and that’s the organization main ideology as well. A member of the 12th player will never curse a player that wears the yellow jersey with Maccabi’s symbol.
The 12th player’s goal is to turn Maccabi into a second class team in Europe, by doing actions that will draw the fans to the stadiums, that will bring Maccabi a financial backbone which will lead Maccabi to become one of the top teams in Europe .
The 12th player is an organization that supports cooperation with the management, however, the organization knows how to stand up against the management if the management will not know how to treat it’s fans and will hurt the basics rights of the fans such as: Price tickets, the police’s “kind” treatment as a result of a request from the team’s owner etc.
Today, for 4 years, the 12th player is responsible for decorating the stands that Maccabi fans’ sit in and leads the cheering, as a result, the 12th player has succeeded in teaching the vast Maccabi crowd the ideology of the organization and make Maccabi Tel-Aviv’s crowd a loving, supporting crowd that cheers the team regardless of the score for 90 minutes.
At the same time, the 12th player improved the decoration in the stands from one end to the other. Many beautiful banners and flags have been made by the 12th player’s members.
The 12th player also improved the style and level of the songs, as every player now has a song and many have been written for the team and the symbol.
The 12th player is not only an organization that takes care of decoration, cheering and fans’ rights but is also a FAMILY!
The members of the organization meet often, and there is a family and friendly atmosphere between the members of the organization.
Languages
English
Contact
Additional Information
History
Gate 10-11’s capacity is 2700 and is considered to be the cheapest in the stadium. In gate 11 sit all the fanatic fans, the main place where the cheering is a natural thing that barely stops is in the center.
In the 2000-2001 season, the 12th player decided to change the image of Maccabi’s crowd from one end to the other. Drums, flags, Nylon ribbons and more were brought to the main games and the most significant change was the improvement in the cheering. New songs were created for the team and the players; the face of the crowd had changed.
The peak was when the team was trailing or didn’t play quite good, the crowd kept on cheering despite the team’s performance. In that season’s end Maccabi won the domestic cup, and the cheering proved itself as the most important thing that most affects the team.
In the 2001-2002 season, a number of differences have been discovered between the fans in gate 11 about the way and time the cheering should take place. There were the 12th player’s members who were in favor of cheering despite the team’s bad performance and despite the rumors of arguments between players and that they don’t give anything for the team while playing, other fans just decided not to cheer but to curse the coach and part of the players in order to “wake them up” and tell him that they’ve had it, the players have crossed the line.
Anyhow, towards the end of the season, a banner that was made by the 12th player was brought into the stadium with the caption “No conditions for love” on it. It means that there is no early condition that has to do with the team’s performance to cheering the team on. It is a right, not a duty, it (cheering) should be done out of love for your team, and should be done always, in wins and in losses.
In the end of that season, the team won a second straight domestic cup and cheering was once again proved as the most important.
In the 3 first years of the organization, Maccabi returned to the struggles of the top winning 2 domestic cups and winning the championship in 2003/2004 season.
The 12th player has put Maccabi back in the mix of things in the Israeli league, and in the past year (2003-2004) moved to a different purpose, after changing the face of Maccabi’s crowd and the cheering patterns in the stadiums, the organization has made it it’s main purpose to change the fans’ rights, a term that is strange and actually doesn’t exist, .because there aren’t any rights for football fans
Pricneples
The 12th player’s family that was born in the year 2000 is a family that its members are Maccabi Tel-Aviv fans that are equal to each other inside the organization, an organization that its goal is to care for Maccabi’s fan’s rights, to make their stay at the stadiums the most pleasant available and to design their image as a crowd and as human beings and lead them on to a lot of achievements.
The 12th player’s relation to its members
The 12th player’s family sees it important that its members will be sensitive towards the society, true with their selves and their friends and will have integrity. We believe that the fact that a person who is a member on the 12th player doesn’t have to bother him with his life and it is important to us that a member in our family won’t turn us to the center of his life, but that the 12th player would be an extra flavor in his life as something that would add color and joy to his life and won’t disturb his life.
The 12th player’s relation to Maccabi
The relation to Maccabi needs to be divided to two parts.
The first, the management of Maccabi, who we see as a partner for our goal to turn Maccabi to a stronger and a better team, however, as fan representatives that are the consumers of the management’s products (tickets, season tickets, jerseys and other merchandise) we will care for the crowd’s rights and in case the management hurts these rights, we will not stand beside them.
The second is the team itself. The players, the coach who we will never curse or swear because a professional reason and we will always support them at the stadiums, unless they will break ethic codes such as: relation to the crowd, disrespecting the club and disrespecting themselves.
The 12th player’s relation to fans of other teams We’ll start with the fact that we’re not really fond of the rival teams, don’t like losing to them and don’t like to sound the roar of “yes!!” after their goals that we surrender, but we recognize the fact it is the nature of the game. That means, with no losses, we wouldn’t have enjoyed the wins so much, and without a gate full of the rival’s team fans, we wouldn’t have a challenge as fans and we wouldn’t have gotten to the achievements we achieved and we’ll achieve in the future. We think, that a person, that becomes a fan of a certain team, he could have become a fan of another team in different circumstances and that’s the reason the “hate” that evolved here between fans of different teams is hypocrite because every fan of every team as a friend who is a fan of another team. If we get to proportion, it’s just a sportive rivalry.
The 12th player’s relation to violence The 12th player’s members will always fight violence. We don’t think that it has a place at the football stadiums, and we don’t think that violent people should be at the stadiums. We think that people who go to football stadiums in order to pick fights, steal scarves to the other team’s fans etc’ poor people with frustration from their shallow world that interpret their support to their team wrong. In their eyes, a fan that hates or hits another fan is a better fan and we see that as a mental disability that it’s origin is in self-pity and low self-esteem. Our definition of love to Maccabi is not hating the rival teams and their fans but loving Maccabi. The day that the rival teams’ fans will be frightened of our fans we’ll know that we failed in designing the character of Maccabi’s fans.
In conclusion We could have described the 12th player in many ways, but this is the way we decided to describe ourselves. We don’t think that our way is the best; we don’t think that the fact that we belong to this family makes us smarter or righter than the rest. On the contrary, you won’t find others’ who are more proud of us in our family.
We thank you for showing your interest in us, the 12th player.
The Protest
On 13.9.03, on the first match of the 03/04 season, at the game against Maccabi Ahi-Nazereth in Bloomifield, began the 12th player with the support of the Ultras organization its protest for the rights of Maccabi fans.
The background for the protest is the ignorance and attitude of the management towards the crowd, and the objection to meet with fans and hear their problems for the past 3 years.
On 30.7.03 a letter by the 12th player was sent to members of the management (Loni Hertzikovich, Tali Leibovich, Tami Fridman, Eli Driks) where it was detailed about the activity of the 12th player in the stands and the fans’ problems were also stated:
1.The ticket prices are far too high.
2.The rise in the season ticket price despite the cut in the team’s funds.
3. The Vilan Law- A law by the politician Avshalom Vilan and was supported by the owners of the teams and Loni Hertzikovich in particular. The law enables arresting innocent people (for instance, arresting a kid that stands beside a flare even though he didn’t light it).
4. The Police’s attitude to the fans- we believe that the owners of the teams can help us get better attitude from the police and help us prevent violence.
5. The team’s attitude to past players and the lack of respect when releasing them – in the letter, Alon Brumer and Avi Cohen (Jerusalem) were mentioned but unfortunately, 13 days after the letter was sent we were forced to see the horrible way Maccabi released the biggest symbol ever- Avi Nimni.
In the letter, the 12th player called the management to sit and discuss the fan’s problems with representatives from the 12th player.
Unfortunately, the 12th player didn’t get any answer whatsoever from the management regarding the letter.
As a result of that, and comprehending that the management prefer to ignore the fan’s problems, it was decided among the 12th player to go on a protest that in its end the fans’ rights will return.
The protest’s mode was decided to be that in home games the 12th player will not cheer the team, and as a result the cheering in games will be hardly harmed and in the away games, the 12th player members will cheer regularly. In both cases, the 12th player members will come to games wearing black shirts to emphasize the amount of protesters.
The idea around the protest’s mode is to harm the atmosphere in home games and by that preventing people from coming to Maccabi’s games at home, which would hurt the management very badly as it’s a very hard strike to the financial state which Maccabi is in. This financial blow will make them sit with the fans and discuss their problems.
Another side to this protest’s mode, is to show the power the 12th player has, when there will be absolute silence in Bloomfield (Home games) and in away games there will be regular cheering, a carnival as usual.
This mode was chosen because it’s the best and maximal way to hurt the club financially (the financial harm is only the means to get the goals of the protest and not the purpose of the protest itself!) at home games, because most of the fans have already bought a season ticket.
In the first game of the season, a pamphlet was handed out to the fans describing the purpose of the protest. The 12th player’s members, came to the game wearing black shirts, and didn’t cheer the team. No banner got hung up for the team but the banner “There is no team without fans”.
Throughout the season, as more fans joined the protest, and it was felt very well, when there was very good cheering at away games (Haifa, Derby etc.) and silence at home games (Beitar, Netanya, Ashdod).
In the first derby, the 12th player gave one of the best cheering performances ever seen in Israel, and negotiations started a week later between representatives of the 12th player and the management. The negotiations was declared a success and everything was agreed but someone in the management got cold feet and cancelled everything in the 90th minute, despite the fact that there were announcements for the press that were ready.
Despite the cancelled agreements, the protest managed to get 2 things for Maccabi’s fans.
1. Free entrance for women to gate 5 (a thing that was stopped and renewed towards the game against Ahi-Nazereth in the 3rd round).
2. Youth Tickets for gate 8 were published for the first time ever.
The protest continued as usual and with it, the financial blow wasn’t late to come.
At the game against Maccabi Petach-Tikva in Bloomfield Maccabi sold only 300 tickets, 100 of those to Maccabi Petach-Tikva’s fans. 200 tickets for a game for Maccabi fans is puny in comparison to the ticket sales for the previous year.
At the game against Maccabi Haifa, Bloomfield was far from being sold out, after it was sold out in Ramat-Gan a year before (there are 15,700 seats in Bloomfield and 45,000 in Ramat-Gan).
At the derby, in the 2nd round, there were only 13,000 supporters, in Ramat-Gan, after an attractive sale in the food networks and despite the fact that profiteers sold tickets at 10 shekels a ticket an hour before the game.
It needs to be mentioned that in that game too, Maccabi filled Ramat-Gan stadium.
The financial damage from those games only is 4-5 Million shekels.
Towards the end of the 3rd round, the 12th player decided to exacerbate the protest, to make the management want to end the protest as soon as possible.
The 12th player organization decided to boycott the away games and by that to prevent the cheering in away games as well.
The 12th player’s members and supporters of the protest came to see the game against Hapoel Beer-Sheva in the 2nd round together at “Dani’s House” (an entertainment place) and avoided the drive to the south.
3 weeks later, the 12th player decided to reach out its hand for peace with the management and cancelled the boycott on away games.
In Addition, as a step of good will and good gesture to the management, so that the management would see that there is true will by the 12th player to end the protest, it has been decided that at the game against Hapoel Beer-Sheva in the 3rd round, the 12th player members will cheer from the 2nd half.
A week later, the 12th player fulfilled his promise and cheered the team for 90 minutes at the away game, the derby.
Today, the 12th player hopes that the management would do the same and reach out its hand for peace as well so that the protest will end and the fan’s will have their rights!
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External Links
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