14 and a half years after leaving particularly jarring tones, Oded Katash Returns to Maccabi Tel Aviv. But this time he’s doing it from the front door, and this season will be one of the biggest and most complex tests of his career.
Katsch’s name, as I recall, came up during last season among the management of Maccabi Tel Aviv. He was the only coach with whom the team leaders met, but the offer at the time – for only four months without a promise for the 22/23 season – did not satisfy him. In those days, in February 2022, the Yellows did not want to commit to Katsch for this season because they thought they would be able to land a senior coach in the summer.
Fate wanted it, and the senior coach is Katsch himself.
It’s no secret that Katsch was not Maccabi Tel Aviv’s first choice this summer, aiming for a Euroleague coach with a rich resume and proven achievements. Andrea Trinkieri was an interesting candidate, but Bayern Munich made it clear he is under contract and he is not going anywhere. The next name was Xavi Pasquale, who was also under contract at Zenit St Petersburg, but the situation in Russia led Maccabi to believe that it might be possible to make a move for him.
Maccabi has gone out of its way in recent weeks to try to land the coach in Tel Aviv, who was also a former European champion. Although on social media and among quite a few fans, the above move was perceived as a kind of spin, but Maccabi had a real attempt to sign Pasquale. The Spaniard was offered a salary of more than a million euros in a long-term contract, There will be a certain drop each season – they did not allow the Yellows to close the deal.
At this point, Maccabi Tel Aviv has reached a kind of junction. The list of senior coaches available in the market no longer looked as glitzy as they thought it would look during last season, when Katsch did not get the commitment he wanted. And Limir Prasovic or Alexander Gurevitch are certainly worthy coaches – but neither of them is a top-flight coach in the Euroleague, certainly not a confusion of Pasqual, Trinkieri or Dimitris Itudis, whom Fenerbahce wore. Katsch has suddenly become the number one option.
True, he has not been like this since the end of the season, but there are some in the management of Maccabi Tel Aviv who believe that Katsh is the right man – otherwise he would not have accepted the offer during last season either. True, he is not a coach in the big order that Maccabi aimed for, Already coached in the Euroleague, albeit for a short period of several months.
Another, and perhaps no less crucial, consideration is the fact that of the options left on the table for Maccabi Tel Aviv, Katsch is probably the only coach fans can connect with. The direction that the management of Maccabi Tel Aviv outlines: more characters who are identified with the club, successes, ones that will also be easy to connect with.
On Tuesday morning, when Maccabi Tel Aviv realized that Pasqual’s option was completely out of the question, contacts began with Katsch. Katsch wanted a contract for two seasons, Maccabi were not happy to commit to the 23/24 season either, so in the end an interim solution was found: two years with certain conditions after the first year.
Another dispute that Maccabi Tel Aviv and Katsch had to resolve was around the assistant coach. Nikola Vujicic and other club members wanted to see Igor Milicic join the team, while Katsh preferred a man on his behalf, such as Yonatan Alon, who worked alongside him at Hapoel Jerusalem and is currently serving As the professional manager of Gilboa / Galil, at the moment, it is still unclear who Katsh’s staff members will be, and it is possible that in the end these will be a person on his behalf and Milicic.
So after all the summaries were finally reached, Katsch returns to Maccabi Tel Aviv, and not as a band-aid or as a temporary substitute. He stood his ground during last season and did not agree to take the team for just a few months, and now gets a chance to build a Euroleague team from the beginning, for the first time since the previous term in yellow, somewhere in the summer of 2007. This season, the hope is that Oded will be the right man in the right place.
