This is a guest post by Ashley Perry.
Once again the Israeli national football team has failed to qualify for a major tournament. Losing one-nil to Latvia at home all but ended mathematically Israel’s chances of going to South Africa for the World Cup next year.
Israel has only ever qualified for a major tournament once in its history. In 1970, the Israeli team qualified for the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, drawing two games, losing one and scoring one solitary goal.
Qualification for next year’s World Cup couldn’t have been easier, and in the immortal words of the England 1982 World Cup qualification song “This time more than any other time”, Israel was drawn in a group including Latvia, Greece, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Moldova, national team coach Dror Kashtan described it as a “golden opportunity”.
However, the fact that there was no “big team” in the group made no difference. Israel were appalling and struggled against the so-called lesser teams. So why don’t Israel qualify for major tournaments? Are the players so inept?
I would say that individually Israeli players are at least as skillful as say the Greeks and Turks, who regularly qualify (and win in the case of Greece) major tournaments. The problem is the overall mentality of Israeli football in general.
A few years back they compared the training regimen of two Israelis, Tal Ben Chaim (then of Bolton in the UK Premier League) and David Revivo (playing for Ashdod in the Israeli top division). They showed Ben-Chaim rose early get to the Bolton training ground and immediately spent an hour or so on the weights machines. Then he and his team-mates did a series of hard sprinting and muscle tone exercises on the field. Only after another series of exercises did they even see a ball and that was to engage in a hard-fought training session.
Revivo on the other hand turned up at Ashdod’s training ground at what seemed to be mid-morning, proceeded to sit and shmooze with everyone from the groundsman to the fans. He made himself a coffee and put on Tephillin. One by one other players arrived and all that remained was for a gentle kick-about between some of the team-mates and then they parted ways.
This sums up everything. According to fitness experts, Israeli footballers can’t maintain a satisfactory level of fitness beyond 70 minutes. It showed yesterday that when the Latvians scored in the 59th minute, Israel’s reaction was to muster barely a whimper and not fight like crazy to hold onto the last hope of qualification to what should be every footballers’ dream.
With that I move onto the mentality. The only players who have ever made it abroad have been the hard-working players like Benayoun, Ben-Chaim and Berkovic. Many gifted players have tried to play in higher leagues but without the mentality they failed miserably. A case in point was Itzik Zohar’s brief sojourn at Crystal Palace a few years ago. Palace’s manager sent Zohar home after a few months because of his lack of discipline and attitude, even though Palace manager claimed that Zohar was one of the most technically gifted players he ever signed. Just to show you how bad an impact Zohar made on the club, he was listed as one of the top 10 worst ever signings by Palace supporters.
The amount of players who had actually signed for European clubs and were moved on within half a year is amazing. Barack Yitzhaki was only one of the latest to do so when he left Belgium side Genk after only a few months, even though he did quite well on the field.
Many Israeli players are too content to be big fish in a small pond rather than have to work hard to make a modest size reputation. This of course has not stopped many Israeli players who show two good touches from claiming that they are ready for Spain or England.
Finally, and to mind most importantly, is the tactics. Israeli managers with few exceptions don’t seem to have a singular view on tactics and how to build a team. There are about the same amount of recognised managers as there are teams in the top division, so if a manager is sacked from one club he only has to wait a short amount of time until he is picked up by another. You can see that almost every manager who has been around for a while has managed over half of the team in the top division and some like Guy Luzon has achieved that in only a couple of years. The fact that he is the nephew of the IFA Chairman is lost on few.
This means that there are no fresh ideas and really no reason for managers to step up their level. The same tired tactics, or lack of, that relegated one team will be used on the next club. This is not helped by the fans and media who contribute to this merry-g-round. As soon as a manager is sacked, the same tired names appear in the media and sometimes (as in the case of Betar Jerusalem ) the fans will be calling only for the names of the three most recent managers to take over even after they each failed in the recent seasons an were driven out by the supporters’ boos.
The odd foreign manager brought in is no better as they are usually chosen for their name as a player even when they have failed miserably and consistently as a manger. Ossie Ardiles and Lothar Mattheus two famous examples.
Israeli football needs fresh faces, fresh ideas and tougher training. It needs a proper overhaul from top to bottom. Something similar to the transformation of Turkey and Greece from the whipping boys of Europe (I still remember England thrashing Turkey 8-0 with a Luther Blissett hat-trick) to top-level teams fighting for honours.
I think change has to start at the top and the parochial attitude must be changed. People like Avi Luzon, Chairman of the IFA, must be replaced with someone who is forward thinking and can build a totally new infrastructure. But change also has to come from the grassroots. I watch young Israeli kids who are taught and lauded for irrelevant step-overs and not a word will be said when they don’t even cover back or move five inches from an area of grass the whole game.
Only with these massive changes can Israeli football reach the level it is capable of attaining. It won’t happen tomorrow, but it can happen, Israel has the talent.
