Dor Micha has not cried in the last year and a half.
Not after the initial publication about the "footballers and minors" affair, not when his name was revealed, not in the police investigations, not even when it was made clear to him that he had finished his career at Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Everyone around him talks about the extraordinary intensity of emotions, about resilience, about maturity.
On Wednesday, precisely after missing Pendel in the decisive kicks in the Toto Cup final, he broke down and wept bitterly.
There are those who claim that missing two penalties in a row, in a new club, broke him.
Some people think it was an outlet.
Micha has stored so much inside him that the dam has been breached exactly where he loves to be - on the field.
"Crying now is crying from a year ago," someone said of him this week.
To a large extent, this collapse cleaned him up ahead of the charged meeting on Saturday against Maccabi Tel Aviv.
For the first time in his life he will play in front of the house.
Missing two consecutive penalties at a new club broke him.
Micha (Photo: Berni Ardov)
On June 10, 2020, Almog Boker published on Channel 13 News that two footballers, from a senior team in Israel, had sex with two girls under the age of 16, at the home of one of them, after they met at a party and exchanged phone numbers. Even before a complaint was filed with the police, everyone who was accessible to social networks already knew who it was. The shock of the identity of those involved was no less great than the severity of the act.
Things rolled quickly. After a struggle of several days in the restraining order, the names were published: Omar Atzili and Dor Micha. A noble married and father, Micha Single, who broke up just a few weeks earlier with his girlfriend Noel Berkowitz, a child star, who has been dating him since she was 18. Already in the initial screening stage, the brain cataloged Micha as trailing in the affair. The discourse in the WhatsApp segment saw him as a victim. "Make more of this affair than it really was," a friend of his said this week.
The footballers came to the police station several times to be questioned, and it soon became clear that on the criminal level there was nowhere to go.
"We did not know they were 16," was an argument that proved itself.
The moral question remains in the air: What are footballers - one of them married - looking for in young women ("looks 24 years old," one footballer told me this week) in the middle of the Corona crisis, and more during a championship race?
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The members tried to enlist without success.
Schechter and Micha on better days at Maccabi Tel Aviv (Photo: Danny Maron)
What was sawn through the air, came quickly to Canada. Mitch Goldhaar was furious. What was not clear to the players in the initial stage was immediately clear to him. He did not wait for the end of the investigation, nor for the prosecutor's decision, nor for an apology, nor for a confession. He cut immediately: yes signed a contract or not, the two will not continue at Maccabi Tel Aviv. A source who was at Maccabi Tel Aviv said this week: "Mitch did not know exactly the deep details and from there the story ended. Hear minors - disappeared. 'Do not explain to me, I am somewhere else.'"
Only no one informed the players, and even more so: the people of the first avenue in the club. Micha tried to check with the accessible people: CEO Sharon Tamam, sports director Barak Yitzhaki and the attorney general, Adv. Moran Meiri. None of them had answers, removed responsibility for decision-making, and rightly so. Micha sent Goldhaar emails, but was not answered. Players like Itai Schechter, Eyal Golsa or Avi Rikan tried to act on their own to help him through the high windows, but their efforts also proved futile. "People do not know what efforts we made to bring them back," said one of the players at the time. "The people in the country were just a pipe. It only went in one direction." The fear of Goldhaar tamed them. "No one takes a risk and fights in his workplace," they said this week.
Throughout this stage the answer floated in the air and was smeared with coarse brush strokes.
Noble and Micha were not invited to the team championship party, not even to the mass championship celebrations.
They were also not allowed to train in Kiryat Shalom.
At this stage, the case has not yet been closed, so the feeling among the players was that Maccabi Tel Aviv is waiting for the prosecutor's decision.
There was one person who did not make his voice heard - Chairman Jack Anglidis. The British lawyer withdrew from entering the country in those months when the corona plague raged around the world without providing an immune response. The most overt: "We decided to release them this year." The word "this year" was of no importance at all, and had only a hint of refinement. .
Heard "minors" and that was the end.
Goldhaar (Photo: Kobi Eliyahu)
Quite surprisingly, Micha made the decision without unnecessary dramas. Although he was surprised that no procedure was carried out, he was not surprised by the decision itself. The weeks he waited for answers prepared him for the next step. To some extent he even felt relieved. Even when you leave a place where you have been all your life, it is easier for you to understand that it is final to start a new path. Only when he was in Cyprus and watched Maccabi Tel Aviv's games via laptop did he feel a pinch in his heart. It was harder for him to see Maccabi without him than for himself without it. At the age of 28, Dor Micha began a second career. "He got it not easy," one of his friends said this week. "But compared to everyone else, he was ready. The family and relatives were less willing. They thought they would bring him back."
At the stage of uncertainty, the moral question also hovered over the managers of the groups in Israel. The MK himself holds a referendum between the team leaders in Israel if they agree to "touch" (that was the terminology) the two players. Only Barak Abramov from Bnei Yehuda expressed enthusiasm, in his name and voice, and even addressed Micha. So did Maccabi Petah Tikva and Betar Jerusalem. Micha, for his part, by no means wanted to play in the country, asked to go out and freshen up. Anorthosis was interested from the first moment, but Micha was less enthusiastic. The sporting director of Feyenoord Rotterdam, the Dane Frank Arensen, spoke with Vladimir Ivitch who had just finished his career at Maccabi Tel Aviv, but in the end got his hands on the Portuguese Joao Tisheira. Hornbain also entered the picture and even the Gans - then in the second division in Spain - and a non-senior team from Turkey. The friends also thought he should go to the Netherlands or at least to Austria or Switzerland, but in the end Micha decided to go for the most serious group that was interested in him, Anorthosis.The fact that he had a mutual friend with the club's sporting director had no small weight.
At this point, Micha entered a new chapter in his life when he met Almog Bar-Noy, whom he would marry in less than two weeks.
It was easier for him to persuade her to go with him on the new adventure half an hour's flight from home.
Cyprus turned them from lovers into partners.
Throughout this stage - and even now - his relationship with Noble Omar remained good, but while Micha left for Cyprus with the aim of starting an international career, and progressing from there to a better league, it was clear to Noble that this was an exile to her name.
Noble was already in Granada and returned from there with an unpleasant experience.
It was clear to both sides who would return quickly and who would stay longer.
There was no doubt who would return first.
Noble in Nicosia (Photo: Epoal Nicosia Official Website)
Micha lives with an ornamental bar in an upscale area in the city of Larnaca, close to the sea. The place did him good, reassured him, perpetuated peace in him. He did not even think of returning, only one thing he did not take into account: Tamur Katzbaya.
The 53-year-old coach began his career as a 24-year-old Georgian legionnaire in anorthosis and ended his illustrious career (a.k.a. Athens, Newcastle, Wolves, Dundee) in anorthosis as an actor-coach. 75 goals in 175 league games he scored there, became a legend. In a country where coaches are fired every Monday and Thursday, Katsavia recently started his eighth season overall as a club coach.
And her butts are not easy. His style of play is very defensive. He likes long balls, less ball movement, less Micah generation. One of Micha's fans in Israeli football, Eyal Berkovich, once said that players of this type should not approach teams that play like this, that it is the end of a career for them. Anorthosis did not suit Micha, although he shaved, was very much loved, and outside of football he very much enjoyed. Assaf Tzur, ex Hapoel Raanana, was with him on the staff, he met with Ben Shehar, Yarin Peretz and of course Omar Atzili. Micha even became a close friend of Brazilian defender Anderson Correa.
During the season in Cyprus, Micha added to himself the opening of two Golda ice cream parlors in Tel Aviv, in addition to the branch he owns in State Square: one in partnership with Asi Bouzaglo at the corner of Bograshov and Hayarkon streets, and the other in Gordon Pools.
The owner of Anorthosis, Chris Folaidis, has already asked him: "Sign for life."
But water and oil do not go together, and Katzbaya's football - and especially its mythical status - marked Micha's way out.
Two goals and eight assists all season, most of them in the Cup, are not a blanket supplier can live with until the end of his career.
Whoever is ranked among the 15 greatest cooks in Israeli football of all time, with close to 100 cooks in all settings, wanted to go back and provide numbers.
Like water and oil.
Katzbaya (Photo: Danny Maron)
Hapoel Beer Sheva approached him in January, but he had no exit clause. Anorthosis refused to release. Micha did not wait for a signal from Maccabi Tel Aviv, even if he secretly hoped to receive one, if only for the feeling. He moved on. He thought that if Maccabi did not want to, and did not talk about the year, it is their right and he has no reason to beg. It did not even occur to him that he would come to Hapoel Beer Sheva, despite the courtship. It did not employ him.
Throughout this phase, before signing in Be'er Sheva, he continued to receive messages from Maccabi Tel Aviv fans who hoped he would return. He waited to see if Katsavia would continue, and would have stayed - and refused Hapoel Beer Sheva - if this had indeed happened. He felt he could feel a bigger imprint in Cyprus, wanted to continue the experience. The boredom in Cyprus could have driven other people crazy, but Micha liked it. He finished the season in Cyprus, by the way, with a trophy, after a final victory over Olympiacos Nicosia.
Be'er Sheva was in no hurry to sign it.
She waited until July 11, so as not to pay unnecessary expenses, so he also missed the training camp in Poland ahead of the first early round of the Conference League.
She also forced him to post an apology.
"There is not a day that I do not regret my part in the affair," he said there.
"There is no doubt that as a well-known athlete, I am required to be a role model for many young people and I am deeply sorry to have disappointed them. A value base that I sucked from home and will continue to do so in the future. "
Some would say that this apology was not personal, but relative to other apologies, it was far-reaching.
"Sorry", "Wrong", "Apologize to me".
He was in no hurry to sign, they were in no hurry to sign.
Micha is shown in Be'er Sheva (Photo: Official website, Hapoel Beer Sheva)
He now lives in Lehavim, a town located 16 kilometers north of Be'er Sheva. Maor Buzaglo also lived there when he was doing the club's game. Only Buzaglo did not have to fight for his place against Roi Gordana, Ramzi Spori, and Davida Petrucci in one squad. Who was defined by Berkowitz as one of the three great connections in Israel, recently returned to play as a right-wing player, a role in which he is less influential. "Instead of touching the ball 60 times in a game, he only touches it 10 times," he recently said of Micah the Oracle Margba.
But Micha deals with it less. In a few weeks, his attorney, Adv. Roi Rosen, will file an arbitration lawsuit against Maccabi Tel Aviv. So far this has been a matter of timing. This is going to be the most tumultuous arbitration lawsuit in the history of Israeli football. To 300,000 euros, but the total amount of the lawsuit - which will also include items of damage to reputation, mental anguish and more - which will be around NIS 2 million, will be only the secondary part of the lawsuit.The battle between Rosen and Moran Meiri - the two sharpest lawyers in Israeli football - will be dirty. Do not be surprised if you see the minors or Goldhaar invited to testify (also through the zoom). What should I be ashamed of? I did nothing wrong. I've been through the biggest storm in my life - I can handle anything. "
The legal community close to Micha was very harshly critical of Goldhaar and his conduct in the affair, for behaving like a gentleman, treating the affair as referred to as North American League commissioners. Micha's case, according to the people involved, is solid: Micha had a contract for another season, the appendix to the contract is a uniform disciplinary code, signed by all the players in the Premier League. This is a policy formulated in the joint work of the players' organization and the Football Association. These bylaws prevented the signing of draconian codes of ethics drafted by group executives and left in their hands extensive ground for permitting contracts. In the current disciplinary regulations there is no reference to such an affair. Only in two situations can a team allow a player's contract: illicit drug use and betting on team games.
Apart from this fact, Micha will claim that no hearing was held for him and the dismissal procedure began before the police decision to release him on innocence. "They were hanged in the town square and the commander of the morality police is sitting in Canada," Micah's entourage said this week.
One of the people closest to Micha summed up last year between his last game at Maccabi Tel Aviv and his first game tomorrow against them: "It was a crazy year for him with full of variables. A year of maturity and learning. He grew up and understood. Unequivocally, this is a year that took him forward Better than bad. "
