ISRAEL: Tel Aviv sports company creates a web application for soccer fans to be the coaches for an actual football team

Record ID: 252833

  • Title: ISRAEL: Tel Aviv sports company creates a web application for soccer fans to be the coaches for an actual football team
  • Date: 29th October 2007
  • Summary: (SOUNDBITE) (English) KIRYAT SHALOM TEAM CAPTAIN, LEO MISLER, SAYING: "Only winning and that's it. I can't see anything else. That's it. And I know that people at home will see the game and they will know what to do."
  • Embargoed: 13th November 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: Light / Amusing / Unusual / Quirky,Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVAAYJQJX7SL20ZXSI5SFITYK32M
  • Story Text: Fans are recognised by many soccer teams as their "twelfth man".
    But for Hapoel Kiryat Shalom, the "twelfth man" is a coach. And he's deciding who starts and who sits when it's game time. "Fantasy football" jumps to another level in Tel Aviv, Israel where fans control an actual soccer team using the Internet.
    The players of the Israeli soccer team Hapoel Kiryat Shalom meet before a recent match in Tel Aviv, Israel. Their coach reviews strategy, and the players put on their game-faces before the competition begins. It's a scene repeated by soccer teams throughout the world. But for this team, it's not the coach or team captains who make strategic decisions - it's the team's fans.
    Israeli Internet company Web2Sport led an ownership group to buy the Israeli third division amateur squad Hapoel Kiryat Shalom. Internet fans use the team's Web site, www.web2sport.com, which is predominantly in Hebrew, to vote on the starting line-up and to give instructions to the coach.
    The Internet fans can drag players they think should play into their preferred positions on a pitch diagram at the website. After a deadline passes, the information is then collated, and the players who get the most votes will line up for the next match.
    "It's a new concept. It's very thrilling actually, because I get to choose everything that happens inside the game. Whether it's before the game, whether it's during the game, I have a say in it," Patrice Perez, a fan of Kiryat Shalom said as he prepared his starting line-up for the team.
    When former Argentina coach Jose Pekerman omitted star striker Lionel Messi from his team to play Germany in a World Cup match last year, die-hard fan Moshe Hogeg was livid - but inspired. Hogeg is the CEO of Web2Sport.
    "We got the idea from last World Cup, when in the quarter finals when Argentina played Germany and millions of fans all the over the world wanted to see Messi (Lionel Messi) playing in the starting eleven, one man thought other and destroyed all of our dreams," Hogeg said.
    Hapoel Kiryat Shalom team captain, Leo Misler, said he trusts the fans to make the right decisions. His focus remains on winning the game - no matter who is coach.
    "Only winning and that's it. I can't see anything else. That's it.
    And I know that people at home will see the game and they will know what to do," Misler said.
    During the match, fans vote on substitutions in a live online poll.
    They can post comments on an interactive blog during the match and between fixtures.
    Kiryat Shalom's field coach Yaakov Yakhri is under orders from the team's owners to accept the fans' instructions.
    "I will take all the results from the Internet, all of the results, and I will include them in the game."
    But Yakhri admits that sometimes the fans' suggestions are difficult to accept.
    "It has been hard for me to accede to the wishes of the surfers, but I am always willing to try new things, I only hope that it works, but that is what has to be done in the end," Yakhri said.
    Matches at Kiryat Shalom's level are not televised, so Hogeg has hired an outside broadcast unit to allow Internet fans to watch the team's matches online. For away matches they will have a radio commentary.
    Hogeg's company, Web2Sport, and its main backers, online backgammon Web site Play65.com, paid 500,000 U.S. dollars for the rights to purchase Hapoel Kiryat Shalom.
    Kiryat Shalom has a core fan base of about 100. But ahead of last Saturday's season-opening match they were joined in cyberspace by over 6,000 Internet surfers.
    Some fans struggled to connect for the opening game last Saturday because of strong demand. Hogeg said they received about 10,000 hits and would boost bandwidth for the next match.
    In their first match using the fan coaching, Kiryat Shalom was defeated 3-2 at the hands of Maccabi Ironi Or Yehuda. The deciding goal was made in injury time.
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