About 1,400 Hapoel Tel Aviv supporters are due to make the trip to Bulgaria for Thursday's Conference League second qualifying round return leg against Ludogorets, ONE reports, with the away allocation at the Huvepharma Arena in Razgrad selling out quickly once tickets went on sale.
It caps a fortnight of remarkable fan mobilisation for a club that had not featured in European competition for 12 years. Roughly 5,000 Hapoel supporters travelled to Miskolc in Hungary for the first leg on July 23, effectively adopting the DVTK stadium as a raucous home end, and the club came away with a 2-0 win courtesy of goals from Omri Altman and Chico.
Hapoel play home European fixtures in Hungary rather than in Israel under UEFA's current arrangements, a workaround that has not dampened enthusiasm among the club's fan base — if anything, ONE suggests it has sharpened the appetite to follow the team on the road.
Coach Elyaniv Barda is expected to send out largely the same XI that beat Ludogorets in the first leg, according to the report, wary of tinkering with a side that controlled long stretches of that match. Barda, the former Hapoel and Israel international striker, took over at the club and is overseeing its first continental run in over a decade.
One absentee remains Roy Korin, who according to ONE is continuing his recovery and rehabilitation work and was not part of the group that beat Ludogorets in Hungary.
Off the pitch, the report notes the club is actively working the market for foreign reinforcements, with particular focus on Brazil, as it looks to strengthen a squad that will need depth if it advances into the third qualifying round.
Ludogorets, who won 14 straight Bulgarian championships before finishing third last season, are no pushovers at home and will throw everything at overturning the deficit in front of their own supporters. But a 2-0 cushion, according to the report, has left Hapoel's management confident they can get the job done and complete the aggregate qualification.
With away days like this drawing four-figure travelling contingents twice in a row, Hapoel's return to Europe already looks like more than a novelty — it is shaping into one of the bigger stories of the Israeli football summer, regardless of Thursday's outcome in Razgrad.
