I previously spoke about the fact that Maccabi Tel Aviv must change the system since the time of Vladan Ivić, but it seems that the club did not draw any conclusions since the problems that existed during his time remained with Aitor Karanka.
One could think that with the arrival of the new coach, maybe a change would be made and lessons learned from the team’s lack of success during Ivić’s time with the three brakes system, but he did not change anything in the team, he continued with the same system with the three brakes and without wing players.
It’s as if Karanka doesn’t see his team’s games, doesn’t see that it has a serious problem, doesn’t understand the simple fact – this method is not suitable for the current team. Today we saw that even when Maccabi Tel Aviv was behind everything went through the middle and the wing play had no meaning.
On the wings, the defenders play who have no ability to dribble one on one, the choice for them is only to lift to the area. In modern football today you can see Arsenal, Manchester City and other big teams playing with two fast wing players with high ability one on one and finishing in front of the goal. These are important characteristics for the success of the groups.
Instead of getting similar things from the Yellows, we see a team with a huge budget playing a boring and pointless game with most of the action going through the middle. If the ball reaches the wings, this is done only to lift to the box and nothing more.
Maccabi Tel Aviv played in Bloomfield with its audience, but was afraid and insisted on a method that did not work. What does this fear come from? The club tried to bring in a winger in January in the form of Rarsh Ilya and also failed. They brought in a player who is out of shape, and you can see that he hasn’t played since he arrived in Israel. If he comes in, it’s only from the bench for a few minutes and to this day he hasn’t done anything. It is not at all understandable why such a player was brought in.
We saw today that Karanka, like quite a few coaches in Israeli football, behaves in a cowardly way and is driven by psychological fear which in the end caused his team to lose. Without offending the Hapoel Jerusalem players, if I see them on the street I will not recognize most of them. You are leading 0:1, still dominating the game and then take out two attacking players – Gabi Kanikowski and Parfae Guillaume – when two midfielders come on in their place. During this, Karanka lost the game with his cowardice.
If the coach wanted to make a change in the link he could replace one creative player with another, but he made an early defensive substitution. Instead of scoring the second and third goals, he just wanted to keep the score. This is due to a trainer’s timidity and lack of confidence.
When I was the owner of a team, I would tell the coaches – ‘When you are leading, don’t be afraid, I’m behind you, don’t take out an attacking player and put in a defensive player’. When you make a move like that, players psychologically go back.
One day I told my coach to stop doing that and pay attention to what it does to the team. The next day he came and told me, ‘You’re right, I checked the statistics, in most of the games I led and I replaced a striker with a defensive player, I lost the game.’ From that day on the same coach recorded great success with the team.
Karanka is a failure to the same extent as Ivic – and even worse than him. If Maccabi Haifa wins the derby against Hapoel Haifa on Monday, they will already be eight points ahead of Maccabi Tel Aviv. The team has also moved four points away from second place, which says everything about the magnitude of the failure.
Ziv Aryeh does an excellent job at Hapoel Jerusalem, as much as they sometimes try to talk about his style or statements and laugh at them, professionally he does an excellent job and the management of Hapoel Jerusalem did the right thing when they kept him even in less good times.
He is a hardworking coach, he worked for me at the time as an assistant at Beitar Jerusalem and even then I saw how much he invests. I wanted him to stay, but he chose to leave for Dilla Guri. Arya is always thinking about football, it just doesn’t matter what the situation is, he came to Bloomfield and didn’t play with three brakes A large part of the success comes from the fact that he doesn’t try to be smart on the court.
Hapoel Jerusalem is a good team. Although she does not give plays, she plays according to the low budget and reaching the top playoffs is a very nice achievement. If Arya continues like this, a good future awaits him.
Ahead of the national team break that is getting closer and on the subject of Eran Zahavi, facts cannot be argued against, the top scorer of the Israel national team should play for the national team. He and Banyon are mature enough to sit down and close the matter between them, the whole argument between them is petty.