Mandatory Palestine national football team
| 1934–1940 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | Eretz Israel (Land of Israel) | |
| Association | Palestine Football Association (PFA) | |
| Head coach | Shimon Ratner (1934 WCQ) Egon Pollak (1938 WCQ) Arthur Baar (1940 friendly) | |
| Captain | Avraham Reznik (1934–1938) Pinhas Fiedler (1934) Gdalyahu Fuchs (1938) Werner Kaspi (1940) | |
| Most caps | Gdalyahu Fuchs (4) | |
| Top scorer | Werner Kaspi (2) | |
| Home stadium | Palms Ground Maccabi Ground Maccabiah Stadium | |
| FIFA code | PAL | |
| ||
| First international | ||
| Egypt 7–1 Mandatory Palestine (Cairo, Egypt; 16 March 1934) | ||
| Last international | ||
| Mandatory Palestine 5–1 Lebanon (Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine; 27 April 1940) | ||
| Biggest win | ||
| Mandatory Palestine 5–1 Lebanon (Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine; 27 April 1940) | ||
| Biggest defeat | ||
| Egypt 7–1 Mandatory Palestine (Cairo, Egypt; 16 March 1934) | ||
The Mandatory Palestine national football team, also known as the Eretz Israel national football team (Hebrew: נבחרת ארץ ישראל בכדורגל, romanized: Nivheret Eretz Yisrael Bekhadurgel, lit. 'Land of Israel national football team'), represented the British Mandate of Palestine in international football competitions, and was managed by the Palestine Football Association (Hebrew: התאחדות ארץ ישראלית למשחק כדור-רגל, romanized: Hitachduth Eretz Yisraelit Lekhadur Regel, lit. 'The Land of Israel Association of Football').
Football was introduced to Palestine by the British military during World War I and further developed by European Jewish immigrants. In 1928, Yosef Yekutieli, a leader of the Maccabi World Union, founded the Palestine Football Association. It achieved FIFA membership in 1929, despite in practice being an almost exclusively Jewish organisation at a time when Jews represented a minority of the country's population. In 1934 all Arabs involved in the organisation left, as they considered they were being used as a "fig leaf".
The team used to play in the Maccabiah Stadium, Maccabi Ground and Palms Ground, all three located in Tel Aviv. Mandatory Palestine played five official games (four FIFA World Cup qualifiers, and one friendly), before it officially became the national team of Israel in 1948.