Kiryat Eliezer Stadium

Kiryat Eliezer Stadium stood in the Kiryat Eliezer neighborhood of Haifa and occupied a site of approximately 11 dunams.[1] Its three stands covered roughly 1,000 square meters in total, and the ground featured tall floodlight poles, a perimeter wall, and an athletics track, though football was its near-exclusive use.[1] Capacity figures evolved over the stadium's lifetime: a retrospective places its starting point at 5,000 seats, with an eventual reported peak of 14,002, while another account cites an earlier reported figure of around 17,000 before structural and safety changes brought the official number down to 14,000.[2][1] Crowds occasionally packed the stands to around 20,000 for marquee fixtures.[1]

The stadium was constructed in 1955, funded by a donation from the Italian Workers' Union.[1] Its inaugural match, a Haifa derby between Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Haifa played on September 24, 1955, ended in a 4–1 victory for Maccabi before roughly 6,000 supporters.[1] Prior to the stadium's opening, the two clubs had shared Kiryat Haim Stadium.[1]

Over the following decades the venue became the central stage of Haifa football, hosting league title celebrations, cup finals, and European competition.[2] Among the European matches played there were Maccabi Haifa's 3–2 win over Paris Saint-Germain, Hapoel Haifa's 0–0 draw with Beşiktaş, and Hapoel Haifa's 3–1 win over Brugge.[2] The stadium's single highest-scoring result came on May 24, 1988, when Maccabi Haifa defeated Maccabi Tel Aviv 10–0.[1]

The ground also served clubs from outside Haifa when their own facilities fell short of competition standards. In 2008, Ironi Kiryat Shmona used Kiryat Eliezer for a UEFA Cup qualifying tie against Montenegro's Mogren because Kiryat Shmona's home ground did not meet UEFA requirements.[3]

A particularly charged moment in the stadium's later years came in December 2009, when Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Haifa met in the first top-flight Haifa derby since the 2004/05 season.[4] A capacity crowd witnessed Maccabi win 1–0 in a contest that produced a combined ten yellow cards and one red card.[4]

Maccabi Haifa officially said goodbye to Kiryat Eliezer on May 14, 2014, at a festive event that included a 2–2 league draw with Maccabi Tel Aviv.[5] The club then moved to the newly built Sammy Ofer Stadium, whose opening fixture — a 4–2 win over Bnei Sakhnin before a sold-out crowd of 30,000 in September 2014 — marked a sharp contrast to what had been described as the "dilapidated" conditions at Kiryat Eliezer.[6]

Following Maccabi Haifa's departure, the Haifa municipality issued a demolition tender requiring the removal of the stadium's structures and the leveling of the entire site.[1] The cleared land was to be transferred to the Israel Land Authority for marketing to developers, with a new residential neighborhood planned in its place.[1]

Reports published in July 2015 said demolition work was expected to begin in September and continue for about six months, a period that included obtaining permits and disconnecting existing systems.[1][5] A later retrospective lists the stadium's lifespan as 1955–2015 and says a residential project now occupies the site.[2]