After three-and-a-half years under the stewardship of Eli Gutman, Yossi Abuksis will succeed his mentor as coach of Hapoel Tel Aviv next season.
By ALLON SINAI
After three-and-a-half years under the stewardship of Eli Gutman, Yossi Abuksis will succeed his mentor as coach of Hapoel Tel Aviv next season.The 40-year-old Abuksis was announced on Wednesday as Hapoel’s new coach after Gutman decided to leave the club last week, citing health reasons.Abuksis ended his playing career at Hapoel following the 2006/07 season and became the assistant coach when Gutman replaced Guy Luzon at the helm in December 2007.Tel Aviv won the Premier League and State Cup double in 2009/10 under Gutman and Abuksis and lifted another cup last week.Abuksis will be under plenty of pressure in his first head-coaching position, but he does at least have some experience of standing alone in the limelight after he filled in for Gutman for a monthand- a-half during last season when the latter was recuperating from a heart attack.Abuksis will have to rebuild Hapoel under a far from ideal situation.Co-owners Moni Harel and Eli Tabib are still wrangling over control of the club and are set to go to court on the matter later this month, while in the meantime star players Itai Shechter, Gili Vermut, Ben Sahar, Eran Zahavi, Danny Bondarv and Vincent Enyeama are all set to depart this summer