Hapoel Tel Aviv is an Israeli football club, amongst the oldest and best clubs in Israel, the team plays in the IPL (Israeli Premier League), and its home pitch is Bloomfield Stadium, which is located in the city of Jaffa Tel-Aviv.
For many years Hapoel was identified, as its fans, with the left wing in Israeli politics, and the socialist ideology of the “Histadrut” (Israel’s workers union).
Now days, even though the team was sold to private investors, Hapoel Tel Aviv is still one of the only two politically associated teams in Israel.
In spite that the football in Israel is less political in the last years, there is still a big political rivalry between Hapoel and Beitar Jerusalem who is associated with the right wing in Israeli politics. A rivalry of many years.
In addition to the political rivalry with Beitar, there is also a huge rivalry with the other big team in Tel Aviv – Maccabi.
During its existence the team has won 12 championships, 12 Israeli cups and a single Toto cup.
In international competition Hapoel has won one Asian champions cup, and has reached the quarter finals of the UEFA cup (2001 – 2002). It was the best achievement for an Israeli team in European competitions ever.
The foundation of Hapoel:
In 1920 was founded the Israeli workers union, and its goal was to unite all the labour man in Israel. And to promote their interests in areas like culture, settlement economy etc. and to form “a Hebrew working society”.
In 1923, for the first time was formed a sports club of Hapoel Tel Aviv, but the team didn’t last long and ceased to exist after a short time.
A year later was formed Hapoel Haifa sports club, whose goal was “to take care of the physical development of the youth and workers”.
In the same year (1924) a Tel Aviv worker named Shlomo Poliakov a team called “allenby” that was a part of the Maccabi sports association.
In 1927 some people incluing Poliakov) retired from the allenby team, the reason for this action was dissatisfaction from the “poisonous atmosphere “ in their opinion, of professionalism and commerciality that surrounded the team.
Those people founded a team called Ha’Gibor (the Hero) that was shortly merged with Hapoel Tel Aviv.
As the logo of the team was chosen a drawing combining a sportsman, with the hammer and sickle.
The hammer and sickle is the symbol of the soviet communist movement, which represent the labor men(hammer) and the land workers (sickle).
Team’s logo:
After the team was sold to private investors, in the ending of the 1996-1997 season, the investors decided to change the team’s logo, to the team’s new logo was added the logo of “Ketter” company which is owned by Sami Segol (the biggest shareholder of Hapoel), combined with the hammer and the sickle.
This unusual move of adding a company’s logo to the team’s logo’ was not approved by a lot of the fans. Its important to mention that most of the teams in the world wear the sponsor’s logo on their shirts, but the team logo remains clean from advertisers and company logo’s.
Most of the fans flags and other things like scarves carry the original logo of Hapoel, many of the fans therefore avoid wearing any merchandise that have the company’s logo, or blacken the part where it appears.
| Club Historic Logo: | Commercial Logo: | |
 |  |
