There is no vacuum in football. Even if Maccabi Tel Aviv’s game today (Monday) against Maccabi Haifa will be Oscar Gloch’s last game in yellow-blue, the Yellows will take the field against Hapoel Tel Aviv in the derby with 11 players. It will be more difficult for them without the 18-year-old, perhaps the best playmaker in Israel at the moment, but they will find the players to replace him.
The team is interested in Muhammad Kanaan from Ashdod and may look for other players who will contribute to them in everything related to building the positions alongside Eran Zahavi and George Jovanovich, two of the best strikers in Israel. The solution may be right under her nose, in the form of Parfait Goyagon.
Last year, when Benny Lam was still on the lines and Patrick Tuamasi wanted to play football, Goyagon was a central part of Maccabi Netanya’s fun attack. He finished the season with 5 goals and 5 assists, and at the age of 21 his potential is clear to everyone. This year, on the other hand, he was not able to fit into Vladimir Ivić’s (and now Aitor Karanka’s) lineup, and it feels as if Maccabi Tel Aviv is not utilizing one of its most creative potentials.
Il Berkovicone who understands a thing or two when it comes to creative soccer players, commented on this in the “Press Stand”: “Kranka should let Goyagon play. He is the best creative player of Maccabi Tel Aviv and should play with Gabi Kanikowski and Oskar Gloch.” He did not succeed though To maintain stability for a long time, and even during the successful period in Netanya, he was lost for long periods, but showed sparks in the games he played in. At his young age, he can become a significant player in the midfield, and perhaps also the next exit of the yellows on paper.
The situation at Maccabi Tel Aviv: difficulties in acclimatization?
All this is well and good, but Goyagon’s season at Maccabi Tel Aviv was not a resounding success, to say the least. The transition from the central and free role in Netanya’s midfield or on the wing to “just another player” in Maccabi Tel Aviv hurt him, and the team itself claimed that Goyagon “trains as if he is not He cares”, and earlier this season he was even left out of the squad against Sektia Nes Ziona for professional reasons.
And Goyagon himself even went through a sort of “educational series” on the part of Vladimir Ievich, including games in which he came on in the last minutes as a substitute meant to waste time. The player, originally from the Ivory Coast and in his fourth season in Israel, speaks only French and as a result had difficulty integrating into the team.
his agent, Frank Belhassan, even admitted this in October: “The current situation is difficult for Parfa. At Maccabi Tel Aviv he doesn’t play all the games, it’s a different level and he needs to improve. If he can only play in the middle and there is a load, we will talk to the club, when he is on the field it is a show.”
It’s hard to play modern football with two full-time creative players, especially when one of them doesn’t contribute defensively. This season, so far, he has 1.84 key passes and 12.6 turnovers per 90 minutes. He started in the lineup in four games, two of which Maccabi Tel Aviv ended in a draw and the other two were against Hapoel Hadera (0:6 and 0:5). This is an unreflective picture, far from what we saw last year.
His numbers in Netanya do not fully reflect the season. Although he scored 5 goals and assisted 5 more, most of his goals came before an ugly incident, in which he attacked Firas Abu Aqel and Or Inbrom during Netanya’s match against Ashdod. After that, he played as a sort of number 10 in midfield, next to Tuamasi, and was excellent in a team that played quite a bit on passing attacks.
The match in Netanya worked for all parties, and it is difficult to say the same about his time in Maccabi Tel Aviv. The team itself believes in him, and therefore extended his contract until 2025 and refused to loan him to Netanya. Goyagon started the season with Vladimir Ivitch as his coach and with Oskar Gloch in the slot of The Creative Connection Towards the end of January, he found himself in a completely different situation.
Cranka’s solution?
Maccabi Tel Aviv, so far in the Karanka era, played 3:5:2 (or in practice 3:4:2 against Beitar after Derek Lucassen was sent off). Against Beitar Gloch played the role of the front midfielder, while he was sick during the match against Ashdod and Eyal Golsa started in the lineup alongside Gabi Kanikovsky and Dan Glazer.
The latter two are expected to start in the lineup even in Gloch’s absence, while Golsa can play in several positions in the midfield. The latter is not a regular team player at Maccabi Tel Aviv, is prone to injuries and at the age of 31 it is hard to believe that he will be able to play 90 minutes every week. This is exactly where Goyagon comes in, who will be deployed throughout most of the season as a front midfielder in the minutes he played and did so in Netanya as well.
Last year, Netanya beat Maccabi Haifa 0:3 and Hapoel Beer Sheva, the champion and runner-up, with Boris Ino and Aden Kartsev playing alongside Goyagon. Goyagon, in these two games, was one of the best on the field and contributed a goal and an assist, kicked 4 times into the frame and added 4 key passes, along with no less than 40 fights for the ball. He was part of a link center that dismantled the best teams in the league and gave him the creative touch with long kicks, defense-cutting passes, accurate dribbles and a lot of sparks that were enough against the strong teams of Barak Becher and Eliniv Barda.
A little less than 8 months have passed since then. Goyagon, even if he seems lackluster or meaningless at times in Maccabi Tel Aviv, can be the same player and fit perfectly into Gluch’s shoes. Luckily for him, the current coach of the yellows is one who believes in these types of players.
In Aitor Karanka’s previous stations, we have mostly seen a 4:2:3:1 or 4:4:2 formation with lines, where Goyagon may find himself in the role of front midfielder or once again on the wing, as a player who sometimes enters the midfield and assists Zahavi and Ljubanovic create a numerical advantage. He can also be used as a front midfielder, number 8, in 4:3:3, similar to Netanya. At the moment, Maccabi Tel Aviv does not have two high-level wing players to play in this formation, and it is possible that the money from Gloch will lead to the signing of one already this season.
The 21-year-old Goyagon was marked as a great potential from a young age and was even chosen as one of the 60 most promising players in the world in 2018, along with Havicha Karabzahlia, Eric Garcia and Curtis Jones. He was previously tested in Monaco and Barcelona and arrived in Israel after a difficult childhood and lackluster career management, but now he may get a chance to return to European football. “Goyagon has matured nicely and is one of the creative players of Maccabi Tel Aviv,” wrote about him in the “Guardian” last September, and now he can make himself the next exit of the Yellows.
He is currently valued at only 1.2 million euros according to Transmarket, but a good half season in yellow and blue may increase his price and bring the team a significant amount of money for the summer. Maccabi Tel Aviv is a club that wants, needs and can win every game, and Goyagon may be good enough to start his link right now. The high amount that the Yellows will be able to earn in the near future is a nice bonus.
But all of this starts with the opportunity Goyagon will get, as someone who might step into Gloch’s big shoes. It is possible that today we will see him get minutes or both playing side by side, something that did not happen enough this year, and he found himself becoming surprisingly central to the future of the yellow-blues. Even after Gloch, the Yellows have a “diamond” in Kiryat Shalom. Now it’s time to let it shine.