After completing his studies Yekutieli return to Jaffa working for the Eretz Yisrael Office, later playing football for the Maccabi Tel Aviv until the outbreak of World War I.

In 1914 Yekutieli was drafted to the Turkish army and was appointed physical education instructor at the Mujahideen headquarters and at the public school in Nablus.

[2] At the end of the war, Yekutieli returned to Jaffa working for the Eretz Yisrael Office at the Zionist Commission and Palestine Land Development Company.

For two years, he worked for the Israel Electric Corporation acquiring land rights for high-voltage power lines from Naharayim to Tel Aviv.

[1] In June 1929, at the World Congress of Maccabi in Czechoslovakia, Yekutieli announced his proposal to organize the first Maccabiah, the "Maccabiada" (Hebrew: המכביאדה), in the spring of 1932, to be held in Mandatory Palestine.

In June 2008, in a ceremony attended by Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, the Yosef Yekutieli street in North Port, near the first Maccabiah Stadium was named after him.