“It's history. It's something that nobody has done before, I'm glad I'm the first to do it and I hope I am not the last.”
This is Bibars Natcho, the midfielder of Partizan Belgrade and the current captain of Israel’s national team.
Since 1971, three footballers have recorded a vast number of appearances in the UEFA Cup and the Europa League: Giuseppe Bergomi with 96, Frank Rost with 90, and… Bibars Natcho with 80. Behind Natcho you can find names like Pepe Reina and Raul Garcia. But it is not this record that Natcho is referring to.
Natcho is the first-ever Muslim captain of the Israeli national team, and his career story will blow your mind.
KFAR KAMA BRED
Kfar Kama is a small Circassian town near the impressive Tavor Mountain in North-east Israel. The view is exceptional. This is where Bibars Natcho was born and raised.
It is quite unusual to see the Cyrillic alphabet in this part of the world, but the entrance to Kfar Kama is overflowing with signs in Adyghe - the language of the Circassian people. They are Muslim people who arrived at the Levant in the 19th century from the Caucasus mountains. The pastoral atmosphere of the place mixes with the deep-rooted Adyghe and Circassian culture.
Surprisingly, the first thing you notice in the entry road of the village is a beautiful and peaceful football pitch.
During the winter break, Natcho returned to Israel to visit his family. I travelled to Kfar Kama in order to meet him for a retrospective interview about his career and life around the game, for the Hebrew speaking podcast show of BabaGol and the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation (IPBC) - ‘Goal’. The first thing I asked him was whether he grew up playing in that charming pitch.
“In fact, I started to play more in the streets here, right by where you parked the car. We would draw football fields, use stones as goal posts and this is where we would mostly play until my mother would scream at me to come home”, he remembers.
“I would go and play in these streets right after school and I wouldn't come back until the last people coming back from work were picking me up from the field. That's how I think players should grow, in the ‘neighbourhood’. Just like that”.
PLAYING AGAINST FAITH
Bibras has a unique and difficult life story. He lost his two beloved cousins in a car accident, and three years later his dad, Akram, who was the dominant figure in his career until then, unexpectedly died from cardiac arrest. A year later, his uncle Abram also died from heart failure.
Back then he was only 21 years old, on his second season in the pros with Israeli club Hapoel Tel Aviv.
“It was a period of roughly seven years, of one tragedy after the next. It was a very, very hard time for me. I was younger, and I also realized less about life and I was still dependent on my dad, so I probably didn't know how to handle it either”, Natcho recalls. “It's a moment that almost broke me in football because I couldn't find a way to deal with it, and it was very difficult for me. It’s a lifetime tragedy, no less”.
But from these personal disasters, Bibars rose. He grew, got stronger, matured, and built one of the greatest careers of an Israeli footballer abroad. “It's like every time you're on the stairs, you go up the stairs to shape your personality. I learned to cope, it changed me a lot in my character and it shaped me as a person”.
MOSCOW MADE
After recovering from his tragic losses, Natcho shined at Hapoel Tel Aviv, especially in the Europa League. It wasn’t long before a first proposition was handed to the Israeli club. The offer came from Rubin Kazan. Then, with his luck, in the Europa League draw, Hapoel were pitted with the Russian club in the round of 32.
“Look, this story has a funny side because I already had an offer from Kazan!”, he laughs. “Then there was the draw, I remember sitting down here at home, watching it and saying please not Kazan, please not Kazan... And eventually - we got Kazan”.
A 3-0 loss in Russia and a 0-0 in Tel Aviv were enough for Kurban Berdiyev, the famous coach of Kazan, to do whatever it takes to bring Natcho to Russia. And he did. In January Bibars was already in Tatarstan.
“It was a hard situation. I was alone, in a new place, different weather. But Berdiyev told me: ‘you’ll be sick, you’ll get injured, but soon enough you’ll be ok’, and it was exactly how it was”.
In Russia, Natcho excelled his abilities. With the exception of a few months with PAOK Thessaloniki, the past decade was all about Russian football. His record includes 289 games, scoring 59 goals, passing 58 assists and playing the Champions League group stage five times.
He qualified and played in the European League group stage 3 times, and was selected for the Russian Premier League's team of the decade. Under Leonid Slutsky in CSKA Moscow, he added a championship title in 2015/16 and a Russian Cup in the year before.
In this manner, Natcho, one of the biggest stars in Israeli football at the moment, is pretty much a product of Russian football as well.
“It’s true. What I’ve done there it’s an achievement that, in the beginning, I personally also did not evaluate correctly. Russia, by far, is a big career path I chose, and that shaped me a lot”.
ISRAEL’S CAPTAIN ARMBAND
Russia helped Bibars develop as a player, and his hard work paved the way for another benchmark. Aside he became one of the most prominent Israeli footballers, with the arrival of Andi Herzog to the post of the national coach of Israel, Natcho got the captain armband and never looked back.
Even when he was criticised for not singing the Israeli anthem, Bibars did not back down but insisted on his right to represent his country and the place where he grew up.
“I was raised in a way that I shouldn’t look on these things [such as race, religion, etc.], this is why I can’t take this kind of criticism seriously”, he explains with full seriousness. “If it was professional criticism, no problem, but when people speak on these topics, in a sensitive country like ours - they just ask for attention. This is what sells newspapers nowadays”.
He is full of criticism for the way Israeli football culture is downgrading. From the status of local coaches, exaggerated predictions from the media, and the lack of long-term thinking.
“We think that we can come with our pretty face, and that everything will be alright, but it doesn’t work this way in football. We need a plan, we need to work hard because currently, we are trailing way behind nations that we used to be way above them”, Natcho reckons.
“The most depressing aspect is, that it doesn’t look like it will change any time soon”, he concludes.
“Even if we will qualify for the Euros, will it say we are good at football? It will be nice for sure, but our problems are much deeper”.
PARTIZAN BY HEART AND FRIENDSHIP
Despite an unstable season in the madhouse of Olympiakos in Greece, Natcho has guided Israel in two emotional campaigns the Nations League tournament and the previous Euro 2020 qualifications. While both ended with bitter feelings in the country, Israel still have a chance to find themselves in the Euro’s.
“We are two games, just two games, hopefully, from the tournament. That first Scotland game out there is... super tough, but this is football. It is just one game”.
Meanwhile, on his club career, Natcho has found a home in one of the most prestigious clubs in the Balkans - Serbian mega-club - Partizan Belgrade.
“Zoran Tosic who played with me in CSKA plays for Partizan these days. He saw on Instagram that I train alone. Then he asked me what’s up, I told him that I cancelled my contract with Olympiakos, then he said: ‘Do you want to come?’, and here we are”.
After living in Russia, Greece and Israel, Bibars fell in love with the new city.
“The city itself is really nice. You know on the one hand it’s not too big like the places I was before. On the other hand, it has everything. Great people. They are warm-tempered like the Israelis, but a bit like the Russians as well, so for me it's the best combination”, he says.
The chance to play the Eternal Derby of Belgrade also left a mark on him. “You hear it all the time - The derby, the derby, the derby, the derby… and when you come to the field you also really feel it. It's a different kind of stress, it's a different vibe, there's nothing you can say. It's really something else”.
As the second part of the season starts this weekend, Natcho seems to be happy with life at Partizan.
“The club is exactly what I imagined for this stage of my career, and it’s a place that I think I will stay at longer than what everybody thinks”.
*The full interview with Bibars Natcho was recorded in Hebrew for ‘Goal’ - the podcast show of BabaGol and the IPBC.
Thumbnail photo by Partizan Belgrade official Twitter account