In the eyes of many, with all due respect to Eran Zahavi, the key to a yellow championship is Maccabi Tel Aviv’s link squad. The trio that includes Eyal Golsa, Dan Glazer and Dor Peretz brought the team to the highest places before it disbanded. Glazer did stay, but Peretz left for Italy (and for now returned), Golsa suffered injuries and to restore strength to the link was signed Joris van Overeem. On paper, not a bad refresh. Not considered a foreigner, a player who was marked from a young age as a prospect, played in all of Holland’s youth teams, including 11 games for the under-21 team, and if that wasn’t enough, he was also a senior partner in the Netherlands’ under-17 European Championship win.
After he finished his contract in Utrecht, and even before the arrival of Vladimir Ivić, Maccabi Tel Aviv set their sights on him. The club explained at the time that he could play in a variety of positions in midfield, that in addition to rescues, he also knows how to lead forward and enter from the second line, that the statistics indicate that deep passes will lead to goals And that he earns quite a few tackles. In practice, Maccabi may have received a player with a lot of talent, but none of that is yet evident in the yellows from Tel Aviv.
“Yoris is not good enough, that’s the truth,” Maccabi Tel Aviv said, but from the player’s side there is criticism that, unlike the others, he didn’t get too many opportunities. Currently, he has only played 126 minutes in the league. Five games in all, in all He came on as a substitute. “Yoris, like any player, needs confidence and we’ll let him run a few games so he gets into the rhythm and proves he can help the team,” said those around the midfielder who in the past visited coaches without fear and meanwhile keeps quiet and works hard to get the chance.
Van Overeem conducts himself as a professional. He doesn’t make up for it in training, but as far as the players are concerned, he is also stuck because of the method and a lack of understanding where the coach trusts him more. “When you play with three defenders, there is no room for another midfielder and in the front, when there is Oscar and Kanikovski, there is no need for him,” Maccabi players said. Another player added: “He sometimes plays as a back midfielder and sometimes one of the two forward players in the middle. Ivić prefers other players over him, and it shows.”
In the dressing room, Van Overeem mainly communicates with the foreigners, and in the club it is said that he is a comfortable type. He is less connected to the Israelis and often spends time with Derrick Lucassen outside of training, which he arrives on an electric bicycle. “Both are closed like that, they fit each other,” they said in the club.
Van Overeem is signed for three years, but it is not impossible that the moment will come when he says he is fed up. Filled Dor Peretz, Golsa and Glazer, but when he sees that Nir Bitton has been shifted to the link position ahead of him or that there is a preference for the veteran Abby Ricken at his expense, it already makes him think twice, according to his associates. What keeps him going are the fans who cheer him on in every meeting with them and the connection to the country, which he loves and where he went on quite a few trips when he was little. “I’m not sorry that I preferred Maccabi Tel Aviv over Maccabi Haifa. From the beginning I wanted to come to this club,” he said previously.
As of now, he has not yet been sent out of the squad. While Dan Bitton, Idan Nahmias before the injury, and even Golsa and Hozze were left out of the squad in several games, he is still on the bench, but, as mentioned, rarely plays. Until he proves to Ivic that he deserves minutes, he will continue to, at best, warm the bench. On the other hand, after a period of rest, a game like this one against Hapoel Hadera is the type of game where he can prove to everyone, and perhaps especially to himself, that he can still contribute and turn an enigma into an exclamation point.
