There are quite a few players at young ages who are marked as “diamonds”. Ask any professional manager in the youth department, any coach, any parent – they will all tell you about a different “jewel” that grows on the lawn they cultivate or under a roof they have built. In general, in recent years the feeling is that the term “diamond” has been slightly reduced, with every boy or boy with dribble a la Ronaldinho starring in Tiktok or any esoteric network getting the feeling, and the reinforcements, that his stars are equal to the likes he squeezes.
Well, in the next article we will not tell you about one like this. Because Nehorai Yifrach is not the classic tapecast of Generation Z (born in the 2000s and up) that we are used to. And no, the reference is not to one who is completely detached from the networks (although we will immediately discover that there are other types of networks he particularly likes), but to one that has a fascinating refinement of extraordinary talent and character that could be the basis for becoming one of the great players from Maccabi Haifa in the last two decades.
So, Nehorai will blossom. Why are we talking about him? Well, ask Yaakov Shachar who guards his property with silk gloves and sends him his best professionals, even when he is playing at the bottom of the second division. Ask the officials in the youth department of Maccabi Haifa who made sure to bounce him from year to year – from year to year, and take care of transportation throughout the country due to the Sabbath observance in his family. Ask the people at Hapoel Afula how a boy who is supposed to do his second year in youth, has become one of the most influential players in the club. Ask the commentators who define it as a “machine.” Ask.
“It’s just a big game …”
Ever since he set foot in a foam compound, somewhere in the 2017/18 season when he was 14 and had to travel by bus from the Sea of Galilee to the Carmel, the young boy from Tiberias has been paved forward. “I had to build a group for boys C. We were very sparse in Haifa in terms of qualities in the group,” he says Yossi Janah, Today the professional director of the youth department at Nesher Urban, then the coach of the third youth team at Maccabi Haifa. “I received a recommendation from several coaches in the department about a child who came to the tests, and I was immediately impressed. I analyzed him according to four parameters: technical, tactical, physical and mental,” Janah continued, detailing the raw material he received. Amazing. Tactical? Wild man. “
From there, Haifa began to work on the design of the extraordinary talent. “We built it from game to game,” Janah explains, “he played mostly on the right wing and then also about 10, to make it versatile. We also strengthened his strong qualities, like the physical side.” Indeed, Yifrach’s development in the green ranks was good news. After nearly 50 goals in the two years before reaching Carmel, the midfielder found the net 18 times in his first season in the green. A season later he scored 13 goals and then 14, as a midfielder.
“I coached him in boys B and boys A, but they jumped him to the youth. He kept jumping,” says the legend of Maccabi Haifa and Yifrach’s former coach in boys B. Avraham Aboukaret“He was marked from the first moment. Yankele Shachar followed him, came to see him. From the first moment he was guarded, nurtured, he received special training and most importantly – they let him play. Players of his type just do not get off the field, even if they are weak.” , Added avocrat.
Talk to me professionally
“Usually left-footed players on the right are divided into two types: one type is those who get the ball for the foot. The second type are the strikers who get the ball into the field, who gallop forward. The flower has both qualities,” explains the coach and sports channel commentator Eyal Lachman Who adds, “He’s a great goalie. Nehorai Yifrach is a player who should be close to the frame. In the range of the second hundredth, he has the ability to absorb the frame and put his foot in the right place. He’s always imagining a network. “
“He has very good abilities especially in one-on-one, he is a player who likes to go in from right to left with an inverted leg. He takes on actions that you as a coach can not plan, that should not be prevented,” explains Aboukaret. “In defense he just had to get to the right places. He could pass four or five players in one operation. He is a player who scores special goals,” he added.
“His explosive power is insane,” says the professional manager of Hapoel Afula, Yuval Schwat, Who even played alongside Yifrach for a short time at the beginning of the season before retiring from football, “is quiet with the ball, very technical, he has an amazing left foot. He is a very talented kid, maybe one of the most talented of his generation,” Schwatt says enthusiastically.
Yifrach, it is important to remember, recently finished his training in the army. This is an 18-year-old boy who is experiencing a full adult season for the first time in his career. In Afula, they have already fallen in love and claim that this is one of the three great talents that have grown in Israel in the last decade, no less. Voices were heard from the club that even compared it to the wonder children of the current generation, such as Manor Solomon and Liel Abda.
The truth? It’s hard to blame them. In the first seven rounds of the season, the team scored 6 points, with the new loanee from Maccabi Haifa starring with four of the seven goals scored by the team. Naturally, the compliments were not long in coming from the outside as well. After the meeting against Hapoel Petah Tikva, Ofer Tselappa defined him as the most talented player he has seen in the national league since Yonatan Cohen. But then came the injury.
To her and a thorn in her side
“He’s a little injured,” says Avraham Aboukaret. Indeed, after seven rounds, Nehorai Yifrach was injured for two months. Since Hapoel Afula has collapsed: three points in seven rounds, in which it has won only three times, have lowered the daughter team of Maccabi Haifa to the bottom of the national league. Only last week, when Yifrach returned to the pitches for the first time since he was injured by the Maccabi Haifa medical team, Eldad Shavit’s team returned to the winning track with 2: 3 over Umm al-Fahm. In case you were wondering, Nehorai Yifrach is still the team’s top scorer, even though he played in half of its games.
But despite his great influence on the group, during his time in the youth department in Haifa this dominance sometimes came against him. “He used to dribble a lot, sometimes too much,” says Yossi Janah. Without a spare – let him sit next to me and see how the team manages without him. In the end we won 0:11 “.
“Sometimes out of laziness he prefers to get the balls for the pilgrimage,” Lachman explains. “In depth and the game of the head,” he added, concluding: “If he does not buy these things for himself, he will naturally become more connected and less of a striker and thus he will move away from the frame, when Nehorai blossoms it is a player who should be close to the frame.”
“Another point he lacks is of course the ‘pressing’ (pressure),” adds Lachman, “when he plays on the right side that the ball is with the opponent, then he chases the defender, but you will not see him snatch balls in the opponent’s area or ‘get excited’ in the opponent’s area.” . Yossi Janah also had a similar insight on the subject: “He needs a bit to improve the quick return to his position and how to get rid of his reactions after the misses.”
“Provision”
Last September, and for the first time in his very short career, Nehorai Yifrach’s name was inserted in a negative context. According to reports, the midfielder on loan from Maccabi Haifa was released from the youth team due to injury, and two days later came off the bench in Afula’s game against Ramat Hasharon. In response, the 18-year-old midfielder’s place in the youth teams was questioned.
Two weeks later, Yifrach was completely acquitted by the association’s disciplinary tribunal. “Yaakov Shachar sent Ofer Ben Asa, his legal adviser, to accompany Nehorai in the process,” said a source at Hapoel Afula. “He was really injured and he was absent for two months due to overload,” the club added.
“He was really injured, he did not lie, he is not one to do such a thing,” explains Avraham Aboukaret, “he really wanted to play for his team.
Another one with star papers?
If there is one thing that Maccabi Haifa fans fear when a player from their team’s youth department emerges, it is the overconfidence with which they began their careers from a number of “diamonds” from the club’s recent past – which eventually led to their rapid collapse. But those who know Nehorai Yifrach describe a different character, one who can fit in well with the Maccabi Haifa alumni group, in which he already managed to make four appearances last season – the one that, as I recall, was his first season in youth. “When you go up to Haifa graduates, if you do not have positive audacity, you have no chance of success,” says Avraham Aboukaret. “, Take things upon yourself – and he has that. He has no star papers, he’s just a kid from Tiberias. He has self-humor, you can laugh at him and he will flow with you.”
“He knows how to pardon, he knows how to speak and he knows how to listen. Laughs with him, he is a very positive child,” says Yossi Janah. “They made an excellent move that moved him to Afula. To get minutes in Maccabi Haifa, two years in the national league will swallow him. The crowd in Haifa will love him very much, “his former coach praised, adding,” He is very mentally strong. “I stood out in his wininess. I put him in the quarterfinals of the cup in the 88th minute of the game against Nesher and he won the game in the 90th minute. In the semifinals he also scored the winning goal.”
His current professional manager, Yuval Schwatt, explains what Yifrach will have to do to get into Barak Bachar’s rotation: “He can succeed at Maccabi Haifa, but only if he understands that talent is not enough, he must know how to combine work. He must work on physicality and play. His defense. “
Will it bloom or wither?
“He’s a pure footballer, but today football has gone somewhere else – more work, a lot of athleticism, a lot of technology,” shares Schwatt. “Amazing, more than Maccabi Haifa. This is an illusory situation, it is a talent that if he does not take his career in the right directions, it could greatly hurt him.”
Just before he meets Betar Jerusalem in the State Cup (19:45, live on 5 STARS), Nehorai Yifrach’s surroundings already know – the connection will have to get used to in the spotlight. A shadow of a spearhead in the future project of the Greens, so if you have come this far, do not miss what may be the breakthrough show of one of the most fascinating names in Israeli football in the coming years.
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