Meir Harosh has spent close to three decades as the man who keeps Beitar Jerusalem's dressing room running, quietly becoming one of the most recognisable fixtures at Teddy Stadium in the process. This week he turned 70, and marked it by sitting down with his brother for ONE's talk show "Sichat HaYom" to look back on a working life spent among the club's biggest names.
Asked to name the single moment that has stayed with him most from all those years, Harosh didn't hesitate: a championship won together with Eli Ohana. He described it as the emotional peak of a career built largely behind the scenes, away from the players and the trophies he helped prepare for.
It is fitting, then, that among his most treasured keepsakes is a shirt connected to that same title-winning campaign. Harosh told ONE that Ohana's championship jersey is simply "not for sale" - the one item in his collection he will not part with at any price.
Not every memory is a happy one. Pressed on his biggest disappointment in the job, Harosh pointed to Beitar's recurring failure to get past the qualifying rounds and reach the group stage of a European competition, a frustration he clearly still carries.
He was more good-humoured discussing the players who tested his patience over the years, singling out former midfielder Giovanni Rosso as the source of one particular running battle - over a headband the Croatian insisted on wearing. "All day, 'where's the band,'" Harosh recalled, only half-joking about the daily search.
Rosso, whose Hebrew nickname belied a career that ran from 1996 to 2008 and took in spells at both Beitar Jerusalem and Maccabi Haifa, was among the more idiosyncratic imports of that era of Israeli football, and Harosh's anecdote captured the kind of small daily friction that comes with managing a dressing room rather than a scoreline.
The interview doubled as something of a family occasion. Harosh appeared alongside his brother, Shalom Aleichem Harosh, who spent years on the administrative and logistics side of city rivals Hapoel Jerusalem before becoming known more broadly for surviving a 2016 terror attack while driving his taxi in the capital.
"There's a derby between us," the brothers said of their split allegiances, each having spent decades on opposite sides of Jerusalem's football divide - one in yellow and black, the other with Hapoel.
Asked how much longer he intends to keep working, Harosh gave the kind of answer that has made him a beloved figure among Beitar supporters over the years: he plans to carry on, he said, "until the end of my days, if health and strength allow."
