I watched the World Cup final on Sunday evening – Spain suffocating Argentina 1-0 on a Ferran Torres strike deep into extra time, Messi ghosting through what was almost certainly his last major tournament, Emiliano Martínez making eleven saves and still losing.

The first thought that crossed my mind, irrationally but insistently, was not about La Roja’s tactical brilliance or about the end of Messi’s era, but about Benjamin Netanyahu, who had spent the previous week publicly declaring his support for Argentina on The Mojo Podcast, not because of Messi but because of his “great friend” Javier Milei.

And, obviously, against Spain – a country whose prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, recognized Palestinian statehood in May 2024, joined South Africa’s genocide case at the ICJ, imposed an arms embargo on Israel, called for a sports ban on Israeli teams, and sent a military vessel to accompany the Sumud Flotilla, making La Roja not just a football rival but, in Netanyahu’s eyes, something closer to a political enemy.

He was gifted an Argentine national team jersey by Buenos Aires’s ambassador to Tel Aviv on the eve of the match and chanted “Vamos Argentina” on camera – and I thought: this is a man whose own country’s football team cannot qualify for anything, cannot compete with anyone, cannot beat anyone who matters, and yet he roots for a team 12,000 kilometers away because its president is one of the few world leaders who still takes his calls.

The question that followed was one that has nagged at me for months but that the spectacle of the World Cup – football’s most concentrated expression of national identity, geopolitical allegiance, and soft power – made suddenly impossible to ignore: why does Israel still play in Europe?

The answer, once you trace the history, reveals less about football governance than about the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the Israeli project itself.

Israel was a founding member of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in 1954. It finished runner-up at the inaugural Asian Cup in 1956, runner-up again in 1960, and then won the tournament outright as host in 1964 – the only continental championship Israel has ever won.

It qualified for the 1970 FIFA World Cup through the Asian zone, its sole appearance in the tournament’s history. For two decades, Israel existed in Asian football as it existed in Asian geography: as a fact. But that fact became intolerable to its neighbors. Beginning in 1958, Arab and Muslim nations systematically refused to play against Israel, producing cascading withdrawals, walkovers, and diplomatic crises at every tournament Israel entered.

The final........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)