Maccabi Petach-Tikva
A bit of history...
MPT was founded in 1912 by Avshalom Gissin and a few more students from Petach-Tikva who studied together in Kushta (Turkey). Gissin, who was also an active member of the defence fources that guarded Petach-Tikva from hostile attacks, was killed on duty in the year 1921. The team was then named after him: Maccabi Avshalom Petach-Tikva.Even though MPT is one of the senior football clubs in Israel (preceeded only by Maccabi Tel-Aviv), it has never won the championship.However, the team had won the Israeli cup a couple of times (1935 and 1952) and also won the "Toto" cup (third Israeli title) a few times.
During the years the team had known some ups and downs, and occasionally departed to the second division. The team plays in the top Israeli division consecutivelly since 1992.
European Competition
In European competition MPT made a couple of appearances in the Intertoto cup during the 90's, and played two years in a row in the EUFA cup.Two seasons ago the team qualified for the first round of the UEFA cup after 4:3 win over AEK Larnaka (Cyprus) on the second qualifying round (lost 3:0 away, and then won 4:0 at home). On the first round the team played with Heerenveen (Netherlands). The home match was not played after a general strike in Israel prevented the Dutch team from arriving. The teams played only one game, in Holland, and MPT was defeated 5:0.
Last season MPT has qualified to the group stage of the EUFA cup. On the second qualifying round the team played with Baskimi (F.Y.R. Macedonia) and won 11:0 on aggregate (away: 5:0, home: 6:0).On the first round MPT played with FK Partizan (Serbia and Montenegro), and recovered from a 2:0 home defeat on the first leg with a 5:2 away win!
The group stage, however, was not a success for our team.The team played with Palermo (Italy), Brondby (Denmark), Lokomotiv (Russia) and Espanyol (Spain), lost all 4 matches and (obviously) did not progress to the next round.
Last season (2006/7) the team took part in the Intertoto cup, but failed qualifying to the Eufa cup.
The Luzons...
MPT is also known as the team of the Luzon family.The team chairman until recently was Avi Luzon, who has been active in the club for many years and got to lead it in 1992.After a few years he recruited his businessman brother, Amos Luzon, to be the head sponser of the club, and also the club president. Another brother, Itzik Luzon, was appointed to be the administrative manager and manager of the youth teams. The coach of the youth team was their nephew, Guy Luzon, who was a player of the team but suffered a severe injury which forced him to quit at the early age of 22.
After a few years as youth coach and assistant coach of the team, Guy Luzon got to be the head coach of MPT, and he has been in this position for 5 years already.
On December 2005 Avi Luzon resigned from the chairman position, in order to head the Israeli Football Association. The new chairman is a local businessman and team fan Moshe (Shino) Zoaretz.
