The enthusiasm for Maccabi Haifa’s season opener was a bit of a lie. Who like her should have known this: a team that plays in the Champions League, always starts strong in the local framework, and then slowly starts to slow down. A team that qualifies for the group stage in the Champions always reaches its peak at the beginning of the league, only to discover that it cannot reach another such peak during the same season.
Each case is individual. Each group that experienced this expressed the dissonance a little differently. But in the end – the pattern is similar and the bottom line is the same. The mistake we all make is to look for the same material fatigue, combined with urine that comes to mind, while the team plays in both establishments. But in practice the contrast is seen more and more precisely as the Champions League experience gets further and further away.
Let’s go back for a second to the two previous times when Maccabi Haifa reached the Champions League. In 2002/3, Maccabi Haifa had, perhaps, the best quality team that wore green, and like this season, everyone was enthusiastic about the ability of the greens to win in the Israeli league, at the same time as the best ability in the Champions League. In the first ten rounds of 2002/3, the Greens amassed nine wins. The gap between them and the rest of the league seemed huge, almost insurmountable, but then in rounds 11-20 the greens had already dropped to four wins, and in rounds 21-30 they scraped the five wins. In cycle 31-33 the greens gained 100 percent success, but Nir Klinger can tell you all that it was already too late.
The second team of Maccabi Haifa that visited the Champions League was the worst team that Israel had in the prestigious group stage, but in the league it put up a great statistical line, one of the best ever. The greens went through the first ten rounds without losing a point, which is not surprising. But in the next ten games, the balance dropped to eight wins, and in cycle 21-30 we already reach seven wins. True, we have not forgotten, that season the Greens lost the title in the last round, with an unforgettable draw against Bnei Yehuda in Bloomfield, but with such numbers at the start of the season, they should have secured the title even before that.
The pattern repeats itself both with Hapoel Tel Aviv, who advanced to the group stage of the Champions League a year later, and with Eran Zahavi’s almost perfect Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2015/16: a rapid leap forward, great satisfaction from being able to combine the top of Europe with bread and butter in Israel, But then the mental and physical wear and tear of the system begins.
At that Maccabi Tel Aviv of Zahavi, a team that looked way above the league, after a crushing treble as you remember, the fall from the tree of hubris came a little later: between cycle 1-20, Maccabi Tel Aviv model 2015/16 won 16 games, lost two and ended two in a draw – Meaning, 83 percent success. Between the 21-36 cycle, the yellow machine, which was sure that everything was small for it, already dropped to 68 percent success: it achieved only nine victories, although it lost only once, but it ended in a draw 6 times against teams of a size that even the current Maccabi Haifa did not believe it was You can’t win.
And there is another common denominator between most of the Israeli teams that played in the Champions League. The vast majority lost the title to a team that few believed would lift a plate. It turns out that this is also a year of opportunity. In 2003, it was Maccabi Tel Aviv of Kobi Musa and Salam Abu Siam, which took advantage of the unusual season in Israel. In 2010, Hapoel Tel Aviv took a surprising double, certainly for those who remember how that season developed. In 2012, Kiryat Shmona won a sensational championship, and in 2016, here we may be moving from the example to the example – it was Hapoel Beer Sheva. Will Hapoel Be’er Sheva provide us with a relatively unplanned champion again this year, and again in a season when an Israeli team qualified for the championships? That’s where the wind blows, but right now that’s not the point.
The point is that after six visits by Israeli teams in the group stage of the champions, Maccabi Haifa currently has enough statistics to better understand what is happening to them. And perhaps also: how to change this rather absolute statistic.
The past cases show that not purchasing in January is the solution to material fatigue and the excessive confidence accumulated in the system. In 2002/3, for example, Maccabi Haifa brought in two top players who strengthened the team that was already two levels above everyone else in terms of the quality of the staff: Eliniv Barda and Idan Tal. True, Igbini Yakubu did indeed leave in the winter window, but again – with the massive purchase that arrived, two hungry and talented players, and an almost perfect base in every position – it should have been enough for a third championship in a row. So, exactly 20 years ago, it didn’t happen.
In order for history not to repeat itself this time as well, Maccabi Haifa must free itself from the notion that those who are supposed to refresh it and restore its supremacy are the procurement players such as Dia Saba. The only ones who can prevent Maccabi Haifa from fully recreating that season in 2002/3 are those who brought it to the peak of the record in the summer: Atzili, Sherry, Haziza, Muhammad. This is the only formula on the way to the first championship of an Israeli team that rose to the championship: the old heroes. They are the ones who brought Maccabi Haifa up and they are the ones who brought it down. The other past cases also teach: purchasing in January is a nice addition, but it is never the solution to the crisis that comes in the second or third third of the season.
In the case of this Maccabi Haifa, it is possible and necessary to sharpen the point a little more: the only one who can rekindle the old heroes of Maccabi Haifa is the man without whom they did not win the green championship – Barak Becher. This is perhaps the most difficult task of his career. A task that no Israeli coach has met, but since Bacher’s career data are not entirely Israeli, maybe he will be able to do what suddenly seems unbelievable. If he lives up to this, it will certainly be possible to call him the greatest Israeli coach of all time.
Bacher, like most of the coaches of the Israeli teams that have become champions, has no corrective experience. There was not one coach who qualified twice for the Champions League group stage, and this is the first time he faces such a challenge. But this was also the starting point when he landed at Hapoel Be’er Sheva or signed with Maccabi Haifa, and everyone knows how Bacher dealt with this starting point. Unlike his players, is Barak Bacher, a 2023 model, able to reach his peak twice in a season? If so, especially when you see now how much Maccabi Haifa has trouble cracking simple games, it will be the greatest achievement of an Israeli coach ever.
