Bnei Yehuda broke off morning training on Tuesday for a minute of applause, marking what would have been Nitzan Shirazi's 55th birthday and, with it, 12 years since the club lost one of its own.
Shirazi, who rose from the club's youth ranks to become one of its head coaches, died on July 22, 2014, at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv after a battle with cancer. He was 43.
According to ONE, the club issued a statement describing Shirazi as someone who left an indelible mark on the organisation and on the people who worked alongside him, a presence still felt in the Hatikva Quarter more than a decade on.
Current head coach Eli Levi, who has led the club's first team since being appointed in October, spoke for many at Bnei Yehuda who remember Shirazi personally. "Nitzan was a man of people," Levi said, according to ONE. "He was a professional, a leader, modest and beloved. What I remember most is his smile."
Shirazi's connection to the club ran from childhood. He joined Bnei Yehuda's youth academy at eight years old, worked his way up through the age groups and broke into the senior team at 17, later representing Israel's youth national side.
An injury cut short his playing career, and he moved into coaching, eventually taking charge of Bnei Yehuda's first team. Under him the club reached the 2006 State Cup final and competed in the UEFA Cup, a period still remembered as one of the more ambitious eras in the club's modern history.
He went on to coach Maccabi Petah Tikva and Hapoel Haifa, and in his final post as head coach of Hapoel Tel Aviv he lifted the State Cup in the 2011/12 season, beating Maccabi Haifa 2-1 in the final.
Football ran in the family. Shirazi was the son of Meir Shirazi, a former Bnei Yehuda player and manager, and the club's tribute this week is as much a nod to that lineage as to his own career.
Tuesday's gesture was modest by design: a pause in a routine training session, not a staged ceremony. But for a club that has marked the anniversary in previous years too, it is now part of how Bnei Yehuda keeps Shirazi's memory inside its daily life rather than confined to a single date on the calendar.
