In the 1920s, soccer had become popular throughout Europe, but Britain still dominated the sport. Thus when English teams toured the Continent every summer, they expected victory over the local teams played. One rare exception came in 1923, as Ronen Dorfan writes:

West Ham United, [a leading English team], traveled to Austria, where a local league surprised spectators with a one-one tie. The league was called Hakoaḥ Vienna, [its name meaning “the strength” in Hebrew]. The Hakoaḥ members told their English counterparts at a joint meal that, as a Jewish league, they had to be tough. They faced a violent game from their opponents and referees rarely made calls in their favor. The English gentlemen invited them to a return match.

The match took place several months later in the Upton Park stadium in East London, and the result was a sensation. Hakoaḥ became the first non-English league to beat England on British soil. The league not only won, but swept England’s eminent league with a score of 5:0. . . .

Hakoaḥ was in fact a Zionist league. The club’s prevailing spirit was shaped by its founder, Ignaz Kerner, a dentist who drafted many of the league’s players from Europe’s four corners. . . . Sigmund Freud and Franz Kafka were among the league’s fans. Austria paid little attention to the fact that this was a Jewish league [once it won fame]. The chancellor himself went to meet the train that carried the league home from London, and its victory in London was considered a major triumph for Austria.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.