Maccabi makes a fresh start

Will the four non-Israelis running the Tel Aviv soccer club manage to restore its glory?

By ALLON SINAI
Macabi Tel Aviv owner Mitch Goldhar 311 (photo credit: Adi Avishai)
Macabi Tel Aviv owner Mitch Goldhar 311
(photo credit: Adi Avishai)
The revolution at Maccabi Tel Aviv Football Club is complete.
Now for the hard part: bringing a championship to what remains the most decorated club in Israeli soccer, despite winning just a single league title in the past 16 years.
Three full seasons have already come and gone under the ownership of Mitch Goldhar, and matters only seem to be getting worse. For a third straight year, the yellow-and-blue fans began the season with stratospheric expectations, only to see their hopes crushed before the campaign even hit the halfway mark.
Despite having by far the highest budget in the Premier League, Maccabi experienced yet another bitterly disappointing campaign, finishing in sixth place and missing out on European qualification for the first time since 2009/10.
For a second straight season, Maccabi sacked its coach during the campaign, with Avi Nimni fired in January of last year and his replacement Moti Ivanir being shown the door last December.
Youth department manager Nir Levine took charge on an interim basis and remained at the helm until the end of the season, adding to the frustrations of the Maccabi fans, who mistakenly believed the club had a backup plan after dismissing Ivanir.
Even Goldhar faced criticism. But while many others in his position would have given up by now, the owner remained true to his word and has decided to take an unprecedented path in his quest to finally claim the elusive silverware.
The Jewish-Canadian owner brought in Dutchman Jordi Cruyff to fill the newly created role of sports director before signing Spaniard Oscar Garcia as the new coach. As a result, none of the four m o s t important people at Maccabi are Israelis, with Goldhar’s representative in Israel the Cypriot Jack Angelides.
“When I acquired the club, I inherited an existing infrastructure,” Goldhar said at the press conference introducing Cruyff in April. “It takes time to get to know that. It’s a folly just to jump in. This has been a learning process for me. It has been a very steep learning curve. Sometimes impatience is very damaging. You can bring the whole thing down by being impatient.”
Despite all the heartache he has experienced, Goldhar remains calm and said he continued to believe in Israeli personnel.
“It has always been my intention with Maccabi to build something to last,” he said. “My vision is beyond the present. I’ve just started, in my opinion. I have a lot of faith and confidence in Israeli soccer know-how and expertise. The vast majority of our organization are Israelis.”
Goldhar’s decision to bring in Cruyff and Garcia has come under intense scrutiny right from the start, but the Canadian believes he has found the right fit.
“I liked the way Jordi is not taking shortcuts,” Goldhar said. “I think his age and this stage of his career is ideal for us. I like someone on the rise who hasn’t peaked yet.”
Cruyff, son of the great Johan and an ex-Manchester United and Barcelona forward – who joined Maccabi after two seasons in a similar position at Cypriot club AEK Larnaca – understands that expectations will be as high as ever next season, and he has no intention of lowering them.
“We will play every game to win. We want to win every competition we play in,” Cruyff said after the introduction of Garcia last month. “From my personal point of view, I want Maccabi to be a club of doers and not talkers.
For sure you will see 11 players doing all they can to win.
It’s obvious at Maccabi that we want to be a winning club with a winning mentality.
I’m confident things will be better. I think I can add the right ingredients for things to be better. For me, this is an important step up, but I hope that in 10 years’ time everyone will also look back at my experience here as a positive one.”
While Cruyff received a relatively warm welcome, the signing of an inexperienced 39-year-old coach raised numerous doubts. Garcia joins from Spanish giant Barcelona at which he coached a youth team, but he will be guiding a senior team for the first time in Tel Aviv. Nevertheless, he is confident he has what it takes to triumph at Maccabi.
“I can’t promise to win titles, but I promise to do my best,” Garcia said when he met the Israeli media for the first time. “I expect to succeed and will invest a lot of work with the players. I want to make the fans happy, and it will not be a problem that I’m a foreigner,” he said.
“I had better offers financially, but I preferred to come here because of the challenge,” he added. “I had the opportunity to become the Barcelona B coach in two years’ time, but I wanted to come here, as I feel ready to be the Maccabi coach. I will certainly try to make Maccabi the Barcelona of Israel.”
Cruyff was optimistic that the signing of Garcia will prove to be a big step in the right direction.
“I think he fits perfectly into the profile that the ownership is looking for,” he said. “He’s a young coach, and he’s openminded and wants to work very hard. I’m very happy he made this step because it is not an easy step, and good coaches are wanted by many. I think Oscar is one of the most exciting coaches in Spanish football. I have a lot of faith in him as a coach. In five to 10 years, I think we will be proud to say that we helped Oscar at the start of his career.”
With the yellow-and-blue going seven years since its last significant title, lifting the State Cup in 2005 – two seasons after winning its last championship to date – success can’t come soon enough for Maccabi.
It is easy to understand Goldhar’s desire to start completely anew with a foreign sports director and a coach who have no connection with the local culture.
However, the bigger the revolution, the bigger the backlash will be should it not work out as expected, with even Goldhar to face the fury of the fans if matters don’t go as planned this time.