Last week, former soccer star Eli Ohana received a phone call from someone close to HaBayit HaYehudi Party head Naftali Bennett, who approached him with a surprising offer. This intermediary offered Ohana a safe position on the party’s list for the 20th Knesset. Ohana, who now works as a sports commentator and coach of Israel’s all-star youth soccer team, told him that there was something to talk about. From there, things gathered momentum. On Jan. 26, Ohana paid Bennett a visit in his expansive home in Raanana for an initial meeting. The two of them agreed that Ohana would join HaBayit HaYehudi, and that he would be given the No. 10 “safe spot” on the list.

Bennett has been worried about his party’s radical right-wing religious image, ever since HaBayit HaYehudi held its primaries Jan. 14. He had hoped for a more secular list, thinking that it would be more attractive to Likud voters — those from the more moderate right and from the center-right, who were reluctant to support candidates like Knesset member Orit Strock and Housing Minister Uri Ariel.

When Ohana’s name first came up, the overall feeling was “Bingo!” Ohana, 50, the son of poor laborers who immigrated from Morocco, was one of Israel’s top soccer stars. Today, he is a sports icon and closely identifies with the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team, but also with the Likud and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The initial contact between Ohana and Bennett’s adviser took place under pressure, for fear that the prime minister, who just happens to be looking desperately for an attractive candidate to fill a safe spot on the Likud list, would approach Ohana first. Ohana had flirted with quite a few parties and politicians in the past. It was only after he closed the deal with Bennett, that the HaBayit HaYehudi Party found the time to deal with the potentially problematic implications of that decision.