Abba Gindin

Gindin was born on 24 December 1945 in Finland.[1] His father, Yaakov, was originally from Russia and remained in Finland after serving there as a soldier; his mother, Hannah, came from Poland.[1] The family ran a small shop but experienced persistent financial difficulty. When Gindin was nine, his father died, leaving his mother to support the family with help from the local Jewish community.[1]

Gindin began playing football at age seven in the Finnish town of Ekenäs, eventually joining Maccabi Helsinki, the Jewish community's football club.[1] Beyond football, he was active in ice hockey and decathlon.[3] He later recalled that Helsinki's Jewish community brought him closer to Jewish life and helped organize his bar mitzvah when he was thirteen.[1] When he was sixteen, the community brought in Finland's youth national-team coach to train Maccabi Helsinki, and the coach intended to call Gindin up to the Finnish youth team.[1]

Gindin came to Israel at age seventeen, initially to attend his older sister Matilda's wedding.[3] He carried a recommendation letter for Maccabi Tel Aviv, but was ultimately directed toward Hapoel Haifa after being recommended to its coach, the Yugoslav Minda Jovanović.[1]

During his trial, teammates initially did not pass to him. When Gindin finally received the ball, he shot from more than thirty meters, drawing repeated cries of amazement from the stands; one strike hit the crossbar and landed in the net. Jovanović then asked the club to sign him.[1][3]

The club offered Gindin 200 liras per month, rented him an apartment in Kiryat Motzkin, and gave him an old bicycle to reach training in Kiryat Haim.[1] He remained with Hapoel Haifa for more than a decade.

Gindin made his senior debut for Hapoel Haifa during the 1964/65 season, in a 0–5 away defeat to Hapoel Ramat Gan at Givatayim's HaMiktash stadium.[1] He began as a forward before moving to right-back. The shift occurred during a friendly against Maccabi Tel Aviv: after right-back Aharon Cohen left the field with stomach pain, Gindin dropped into defense and played well enough to remain there when Cohen sought to return.[1]

Gindin's game combined speed, athleticism, powerful shooting, crossing, and sliding tackles. A 2013 Walla Sport retrospective described him as the first player in Israel to use the sliding tackle, while Gindin later said he brought the Finnish technique to Israel as other defenders developed related versions in parallel.[1][2]

With Hapoel Haifa, Gindin won the State Cup twice. The first came in the 1965 final, when the club defeated Shimshon Tel Aviv 2–1 at Bloomfield Stadium; the second arrived in 1974, a 1–0 victory over Hapoel Petah Tikva decided by a Yossi Lipshitz goal against goalkeeper Yitzhak Visoker.[1]

A 1966 match against Maccabi Tel Aviv produced one of the more vivid incidents of his playing days. According to Gindin, goalkeeper Haim Levin grabbed and choked him after he interfered with a goalkeeper's kick, an act neither the referee nor the linesmen witnessed.[1] The weekly HaOlam HaZeh subsequently used the headline "The Choker from Boston" in its coverage of the episode.[1]

Gindin left Hapoel Haifa at the conclusion of the 1976 season.[1]

Gindin earned six caps for the Israel national team.[1] In Walla Sport's detailed account, Gindin said he played five matches in a World Cup qualifying tournament in Seoul, South Korea, and later appeared in a friendly against Uruguay, which Israel lost 1–2 in Ramat Gan.[1] A ynet profile instead states that he played in the 1974 World Cup qualifiers in India.[3] The available sources do not resolve this discrepancy over the qualifying venue.

Gindin was named Israel's Footballer of the Year for the 1971/72 season after establishing himself as a right-back who contributed both defensively and to attacks.[1] A Walla Sport retrospective credits him with 31 league goals, ranks him first among its eighteen best Jewish players to have come to Israel, and describes him as the most prolific Jewish signing since the establishment of the state.[2]

Former players placed him in exceptional company. David Primo compared his dribbling to "a ballet dance," while Yohanan Wallach called his physicality "something extraordinary."[2] Wallach illustrated Gindin's athleticism by saying that he "would run the Tabor race and win it." He also said that, after an initial period of adjustment to the language and local mentality, Gindin quickly became extraordinarily dominant.[2]

The retrospectives credit Gindin with helping redefine the right-back position in Israeli football through his sliding tackles and attacking contributions from defense.[1][2]

After leaving Hapoel Haifa, Gindin also played for Afikim and Beit She'an before moving into coaching.[2] He coached Hapoel Beit She'an in its second season in Liga Artzit; after finishing tenth in its first season at that level, the club placed sixth under him.[4] He later worked in Beitar Jerusalem's youth football department.[1]