{"id":25620,"date":"2015-08-25T09:58:50","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T15:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/?p=25620"},"modified":"2015-08-28T10:00:38","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T16:00:38","slug":"israels-football-team-playing-spain-in-first-international-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/israels-football-team-playing-spain-in-first-international-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel&#8217;s football team playing Spain in first international game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>JERUSALEM (JTA) &#8212; Israel&#8217;s national football team will compete in Spain in its first official international game.<\/p>\n<p>The Israelis will play the Spanish national team on Sunday in a bid to qualify for the International Federation of American Football\u2019s B-Group International Tournament in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>All the players on the Israeli club compete in the nine-team Israel Football League.<\/p>\n<p>A notable newcomer on the national team is former University of Michigan quarterback Alex Swieca, who played in the IFL while attending the Young Judaea year course in 2011-12.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThese are football players. It\u2019s a pretty tough bunch,&#8221; IFL Commissioner Betzalel Friedman said in a statement. &#8220;They\u2019re not fearful, just proud.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Security for the team, which is traveling to Europe as an official state delegation, will be provided by the Shin Bet security service.<\/p>\n<p>With the help of New England Patriots\u2019 owner Robert Kraft, there has been a big push in recent years to develop American football\u00a0 in Israel.<\/p>\n<p>The International Federation of American Football is made up of teams from more than 70 countries worldwide, including Middle Eastern lands such as Egypt, Turkey and Kuwait.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\" src=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" class=\"lazyload\" \/><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"Tumblr\",\"Email\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Israel%27s%20football%20team%20playing%20Spain%20in%20first%20international%20game\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1491],"tags":[6560,8781,8790,8795,8788,2739],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25620"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25621,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25620\/revisions\/25621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crescentcityjewishnews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}