By opting for short-term replacements, Maccabi TA, soccer and basketball, is dooming its coaches to brief tenures.
By ALLON SINAIAllon sinai 88(photo credit: Courtesy)
The similarities between the happenings at Maccabi Tel Aviv's soccer department this season and the basketball department last season are quite astounding.
It's not just that both teams signed young promising coaches to long-term contracts and fired them after suffering a third league defeat in just eight games.
It's the fact that Ran Ben-Shimon and Oded Katash were also both shadowed by dominant figures in the front office, and were both eventually replaced by them.
The decision to replace Katash with Tzvika Sherf might have seemed to make sense at the time, and many also feel that naming Avi Nimni as coach instead of Ben-Shimon is a stroke of genius.
But just as Sherf failed, so will Nimni.
By opting for a short-term replacement, Maccabi, soccer and basketball, has doomed and is dooming its coaches to brief tenures, giving them no real chance of succeeding.
Just like Sherf, Nimni also has the almost impossible task of trying to work magic with a squad he didn't build.
But far more worrying for the yellow-and-blue faithful is the fact that Nimni doesn't even want to be the team's coach.
In an interview prior to the start of the season the greatest player in Maccabi history admitted that he stopped attending his coaching course after realizing that he has no intention of ever guiding a team.
From one look at Nimni's face during the press conference at which he was announced as coach on Sunday it was crystal clear that he was pushed into a corner and that he reluctantly agreed to take Ben-Shimon's place.
If somehow all the pieces fall into place, this coming Saturday might be the start of a long and successful coaching career for Nimni.
However, in all likelihood that will not be the case and Nimni could well be back in the front office or possibly out of the club all together before the season is even over.
Its one thing making a mistake, but repeating one is far worse.
Yielding to the pressure of the fans and firing a coach so early on in the season, resulted in a trophy-less campaign for Sherf, and Nimni will likely experience much of the same disappointment too.
Success on the field starts with good management off it. Unless Maccabi, soccer and basketball, makes decisions with its brain rather than its heart the problems of the past will mar the future as well.
allon@jpost.com
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