In the middle of filming "VIP Winning Couple" Itzik Zohar knelt down and proposed marriage to his partner, the Italian model Laura Lantino • Just before the age of 50, and after he finished repaying debts of more than a million shekels, Zohar declares: "Today I'm just looking for the house"

On the third floor of one of the prestigious residential buildings in the marina in Herzliya, just above the sea, Itzik Zohar is sitting in the kitchen of his house in training clothes and devouring an invested salad appetizer. The man who tore every net with dreadful kicks, shone at equal parties, became a sought-after celeb, appeared on a variety of high-rated TV shows and experienced a host of unflattering episodes on his tattooed flesh, asking for some peace today.

Make no mistake about it: it is still kicking, frenetic and full of passion for life. This week he proposed marriage to his partner of the past three and a half years ("It's a lot for me"), Laura Lantino, a young model from Italy, who has already appeared in several campaigns in the country. But just before he celebrates 50, he is also more mature and sober.

"Today everything is behind me, God willing. I have closed all my debts," he says. "And it's a lot of money. I'm full of drive and action, busy from morning to evening with business connections between such and such companies. I open a football academy in Lod with the municipality, I was photographed for 'Golstar' and a movie by Haim Bouzaglo, and now I am filmed for 'VIP Winning Couple' "I feel like I'm going through a change in life and looking more for home and quiet. That's right for me at this time."

"Suddenly I could be me"

Eight years ago, Zohar declared bankruptcy due to debts of NIS 700,000 to various creditors. In addition, he had debts of hundreds of thousands of shekels to the Tel Aviv Municipality and the income tax. The application he submitted to the Tel Aviv District Court states that the debts were created, among other things, due to gambling. 

At the end of October 2017, he stunned everyone when he decided to leave Israel for Budapest and open a business for makeup and cosmetics brands there ("I had a small fortune, and I found partners"). The headlines cried out that he was leaving because of complications due to the financial debts he had accumulated, but Zohar claims that this has no grip on reality. 

"I felt that in Israel I could not get anything good out of myself, and I had to move myself elsewhere. The move to Budapest did me good. Suddenly all my preoccupation with me stopped. I could go down to the street and be me.

" I was there for almost a year, and returned with much more mental strength. Great, and thank God, everything's behind me. I made an arrangement and paid 94 percent of my debt. "My lawyer told me there was no such thing, such a large refund." 

"Eyal best suited for the team"

His apartment is free of ostentation. A small living room with several sofas, a large 70-inch TV, a small kitchen and a tiny balcony, from which the yachts in the marina are visible.

Zohar spends most of his time creating connections between business companies. "A few years ago, I connected Eli Drix with the CEO of Electra, for an initial acquaintance on the phone, and that's how Electra's sponsorship of Maccabi was born. I realized how many connections I have in the business world and decided to get into it.

"Today I make connections in the worlds of real estate, sports, technology. Last year, I brought to Israel the peace game between Israel and Brazil, together with the sports entrepreneurship company MTR7. "By the way, Laura manages the business connections abroad for him.

Zohar is very connected to Israeli and world football. He serves as a football commentator on 102 FM and on ONE's television broadcasts, and maintains relationships with players and coaches. He has, of course, a firm opinion on the issue of the national team coach.

"I feel sorry for the fans"

There are no stars in Israeli football today? 

"Only Eran Zehavi, who plays in China. One star is enough to hold football? It's just a less talented generation than other generations. The only ones who have advanced in Israeli football are the agents, who take players I do not know who they are, without any goal all season, take them abroad." For a few years, then they come back here and earn half a million euros. "

For example? 

" Sean Weissman like that. It's an agent's flash. Why did he not play here? What are we missing? "Abroad there is not the instant that is here. Everything has to be here now, fast, otherwise it's the end of the world, and after a year you go down to Hapoel Acre. Abroad there are more good players, and give players time to adapt and progress." 

So what should be done?

" The Ministry of Sports must invest a lot of money in football, especially in the periphery. In Kiryat Shmona, Acre, Raanana, Rishon Lezion, Ness Ziona, Hadera. Not in the big groups with the money. Bring in good coaches for children and youth, not ones for whom it is a gig after working for the Electric Company or Bezeq. Invest in good facilities, training methods. Must return to bring here better quality foreigners, like those who were in my generation - Obarov, Polikarov, Kandaurov. They pulled us forward.

"There is an audience. Maccabi Haifa's audience has been filling Sami Ofer for eight years, Bloomfield has been blown up by 30,000 people. But I feel sorry for the fans. What do they see? Nothing and nothing."

Who did the footballers of your generation keep in touch with?

"nobody".

Who was the greatest coach in your generation?

"There were two - Abram Grant and Uri Melmillian. Uri coached me at Maccabi Netanya and managed to get 110 percent out of every player, probably from me. He knew at any given moment what his players were in and knew how to describe to me how I felt at any moment. While crossroads in my life, it was very directing me. 

"I met Uri when I was 10 and he was 23. My father worked as a lifeguard at sea with a guy from Jerusalem named Silon, who was very attached to Melmillian. One day, I'm in the lifeguard's sukkah and Dad calls me down. I go downstairs and see someone as white as the wall, with a tanga swimsuit and one leg on the haska. And Dad says, 'Do you know who it is? This is Uri Melmillian. ' And Uri the Great shakes my hand, a 10-year-old boy. I almost lost consciousness.

"Fate wanted it, and eight years later we slept in the same room at the Maccabi Tel Aviv training camp, where we played together." 

"Coexistence through football"

He is the eldest son of Shmuel (70) and Sima (66), who gave birth to him at just 16 years old. His brother, Avivi (47), was also a football player, and today coaches Hapoel Lod. His sister Heli (40) repented and became an ultra-Orthodox.

"Avivi and I will run the football academy in Lod together. It reminds me of Jaffa, where we were both in the children's and youth teams. 

Coexistence between Jews and Arabs through football. We will invest a lot in it. We also plan to take private tutors for children, develop an app that will update parents For every training, to turn the place into an educational and sports center that will greatly promote the children. "

He grew up in the Bat Yam transit camp, "in a 25-foot hut. My dad was a lifeguard on the Riviera beach near the house, and Mom a kindergartener. We had no money, there was distress, but my wonderful parents did their best and always showered us with warmth and love.

" I had to understand quickly Very much the life to survive. I stole my first soccer shoes when I was a kid from a guy named Asi, who played for the boys of Hapoel Bat Yam. Everyone would leave the shoes in the locker room, and one day I went in and took his shoes. I was size 38 and he was 44, so I put contact glue on the shoes, up to where my toes got, and I put the shoes on the bed, under the mattress, so it would stick well. 

"After many years, I told Assi that my first soccer shoes were his, and I even returned them to him. He was proud that Itzik Zohar started his career with his shoes."

His brother Avivi played for Maccabi Jaffa as a child. When Itzik was 9 and a half years old, 7-year-old Avivi dragged him to the team. "I started as a goalkeeper, I was afraid to dribble and such. I was ashamed of myself. I was sure that whoever lives in the building, and whoever has his own old football boots for training, is safer than me. I told myself that if I stood at the gate, I would not be ashamed. 

" Eli pilgrimage in the first training. I stopped him and started running, I passed them all and scored a goal. Then it happened again, and again. After the third time the coach stopped the training and said to me: 'Come, come, play in the middle'. From that moment on, the club provided me with suitable shoes, brought me old training clothes. I was so scared that they would take everything from me, that I slept at night with the equipment in bed.

"$ 100,000, madness!"

At the age of 17, after a year and a half in the senior team of Maccabi Jaffa, which was then in the second league, the great Maccabi Tel Aviv bought Itzik Zohar for an almost imaginary amount for that period.

"They called me 'the boy from Jaffa', because everyone heard about the boy scoring 70-60 goals. For the season in boys and youth, "he recalls proudly." They came to see me, the number 10. Even the great Giora Spiegel, who coached Maccabi at the time, came to see me.

"I will not forget Friday afternoon, 1988, before the details were agreed between Jaffa and Maccabi Tel Aviv. My father went to the Daniel Hotel in Herzliya for a meeting with all parties, and I sat at home and bit my nails. He came back just before Shabbat and said to me: 'Itzik, you are a Maccabi Tel Aviv player.'

"What joy there was at home, what a kiddush. Maccabi bought me for $ 100,000, madness! "

In his first year at Maccabi he did not receive a salary. He went to training on buses, but was ashamed to tell the team managers about it." Mom would save a few shekels every day, so I would have money to get to training, and back I always improvised something. "Players would jump me to Jaffa, and from there I sometimes walked to the house in Bat Yam."

At the age of 19, two years after joining Maccabi, Zohar began to star on the grass. The team was then coached by Abram Grant, and alongside Zohar played Nemani, Drix, Klinger, Malika and others.

" At that time I also started getting money, "he says." My first contract was NIS 3,500 a month, and I felt the richest in the world. The next contract was already about $ 350,000 per season. A year ago I was walking, and suddenly I earn such an imaginary amount. "

What did you do with the money? 

" First thing - I helped my parents. I opened a sports shop for my father on Balfour Street in Bat Yam, I pampered my mother with jewelry, bracelets, a diamond necklace with a heart, which she still wears to this day. Besides, I left home and rented an apartment in the Bavli neighborhood. By the way, the apartment belonged to Nir Klinger. "

He is very attached to his parents, who separated when he was 10. He talks to them several times every day, and comes to visit them in Bat Yam on weekends," to do kiddush with them.

"" Even when I played for Maccabi, I kept coming to parents on Friday. in the evening. Before Shabbat I would go to play soccer with friends from the neighborhood, even though the next day I had a game and I might get injured. Abram never knew it.

"I always felt connected to Bat Yam and my neighborhood. When I became the pride of the city, it cost me a little. Something in me changed. I am modest on the inside, but something in my exterior, ostentatiously, took over me without me noticing."

When you were in less good times in life, did the parents know?

"They worried about me, but did not want to show me how much it saddened them. And it saddened me to see how much it hurt them."

"I did not have a lobby"

Zohar was known for his wonderful free kicks for connections, and became one of the big stars in Maccabi Tel Aviv and the league. After 13 years, in the '91-'92 season, he was a partner in the championship with Maccabi for the first time. Two years later he made a brief foray into the Belgian Royal Antwerp, but returned to Israel. After a season to win a double with Maccabi, in the '95-'96-96 season - then he stunned the football world when he moved to Betar Jerusalem, and in his first (and only) year in the team, he won the championship with it. 

In the 1990s, he also starred in the Israeli national team, but often encountered struggles for the team shirt. "My ability to influence the game after I got off the bench was great, I would go into the game and score. And that was to my detriment, because they saw that the game could be opened without me.

" I had no lobby. Berkowitz had the great acting agent Pini Zehavi, Yankele Shachar and his father. "Revivo had Moni Harel (one of the owners of Hapoel Tel Aviv in the past), Nemanji had a loyal sports journalist, and Tal Benin had coach Roni Dora, who is a relative. Every one of the greatest in my generation had a lobby. I did not."

Did it hurt you?

"Yes. One of the things I was wrong about was that I did not have anyone to consult and listen to, and that goes back to my insecurity. From a young age I was not a boy. I was born a man, I had no childhood, and I am a very shy person. I am ashamed to talk about myself, Say good things. "

In those years he felt on the roof of the world. The boy from the internment camp in Bat Yam took Tel Aviv by storm and earned imaginary sums of money. It was difficult for him to contain the abundance that had fallen on him in a great boom.

"I may have missed Europe, but my big mistake was that I left Betar Jerusalem in 1997 in favor of Crystal Palace. 

Avraham Levy, the mythical director of Betar, told me then: 'You are the best player in Israel, stay, love you here.' I was offered a five-year contract, but I thought I could conquer the world. Everything came to me then easily, alone, Without help. I was in Vertigo. I thought I knew everything. 

"When I was in England, the gambling started. I was a pissed-off kid who thinks he won the system. "

And losing millions.

"Yes, and I was disappointed in myself. With the money I made from football, I could buy a building in Eilat almost every month. I paid a very expensive tuition fee. Until one day, more than 20 years ago, I just said to myself, 'This is it, I do not touch it anymore.'

Was that at a time when you lost all your money?

"I lost enough. But I always had more. I did not borrow money from anyone for gambling."

Did anyone share your distress? 

"No one. If I had someone then to steer me right, to guide me - everything would look different. I regret not knowing how to ask for professional help when I needed it. At every moment I thought I would manage on my own, but that leaves stains. Too bad I did not learn before One situation or another, but only after things have happened. 

"I had strong falls, and there were moments when I broke down. But I did not think to give up, and I was not depressed. Even in the biggest abyss, and I got to the abyss, I always knew how to find the glass half full. This is my way of life, always finding something to hold on to to re-motivate. Take the biggest boxer in the world - do you know what motivates him? Not how hard he will hit, but how many blows he can absorb.

"I do not live like the codes you and other people live by. I am not afraid to live and try. Something that will look very scary to you, to me it will not look scary at all." 

And maybe that's why you're getting into trouble, and someone's cutting your face in the middle of the night on Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv, as happened in 2008.

'I'm not going into these things anymore. I'm not going back to what happened years ago. "

Didn't you regret being linked to all sorts of affair that hurt your image?

" If you're here, interviewing me, then it probably is not so devastating. On the other hand, there were definitely things I could give up.  "

Did you hurt people along the way?

" I'm sure people were hurt by me. There were times I was tougher with people. I'm sure my children didn't enjoy my tougher times either. " 

"Quietly, facing the sea"

He has three children. Two of his first marriages to Ilana - Gabriel (19 and a half), a soldier, and Michael (18), who enlists in October; And one, the 7-and-a-half-year-old Elia, who was born to him and his former partner.

When you moved to Budapest, you left the kids for almost a year.

"And it broke my heart. To my delight, they came to visit me there. I am a very hysterical father and close to my children, constantly with them, talking to them, very close to them.

" Michael, for example, has a super-talent in painting. He inherited it from me. At school I had 14 negative grades, including in sports, because I was at sea all the time and I was not interested in anything but football. 

"I was lucky enough to be able to draw, and thanks to that talent I was accepted to high school. I studied graphics until 11th grade, and then I retired. Michael set up a clothing design business on Instagram, and he paints and illustrates on top-level shirts. " 

What happened to children in the" tougher times "?

" There was anger. There were times I was less nice. Shorter. It was less pleasant to be around. Today, God willing, everything is fine, they are growing up and we are together. "In

those periods did you talk to them? Did you explain your situation to them?

" Always, always, always. Everything. I'm the most doggy and real with them. "

Where did you go wrong in life?

" I did not always choose the right people around me. The key to a quiet, stable and normal life is to choose the right people around you. This, for example, is one of the things that Laura has managed to change in me. Take out of me the tenderness and tenderness, the insight to stop for a second, to wait a moment. Today I want to finish everything during the day and go home. To be here, quietly, in front of the sea, with Laura. "

"In the end, everyone is equal"

Zohar retired from football 16 years ago and found himself "suddenly, at the age of 35-34, without football and without the framework I was used to. I did not know what VAT, income tax, I did not study business, and when you fucking Itzik Zohar, how do you say you do not know ?

“So I tried to be a little bit into real estate. I bought and sold, and usually lost. "I did not even know what real estate meant. I opened a bar, and a restaurant, and a hummus bar, and on the way I made a lot of mistakes. But even then I was only with myself in my affairs, to show everyone that I did not need anyone. I always had to show that I know."

Over the years he has participated in programs such as "Dancing with the Stars", "Big Brother VIP", "Once in a Lifetime", "Dragon Hour" and "Golstar", and presented on Channel 24 the program "The World of Glow". 

When we ask what attracts him to reality shows, he replies: "First of all, it's great money. You make good money, and it's worth my time." 

He also starred in small roles in the series "The Champion" and "Criminal Reporter," and is now also making a foray into cinema. "I have a beautiful role in a new film by director Haim Bouzaglo, which is expected to be released during the holidays. It is a Moroccan-speaking film with Moroccan actors such as Zeev Revach, Evelyn Hagoel, Ilana Saada, Haim Zanati, Arik Mishaeli and Albert Illuz."

People stop you on the street?

"All the time. 'Here's Itzik Zohar', 'Ya Melech'. But I calmed down, I learned that everything has its time. I like to be more at home and even cook. It's fun to be where I am today." 

What does your agenda look like?

"Full. I no longer get up at noon, like I used to. In the morning I run at sea or do a workout in the gym. I eat breakfast with Laura, and at nine I already go out to meetings in my office near the stock exchange in Ramat Gan. 

" I return home at seven in the evening, do another workout Fitness and rest. The sea calms me down. Just let me stand like this at the end of the day over the marina and breathe good air quietly and peacefully. "

Where did the corona crisis catch you in March?

" In Brazil, I went there with Laura for the filming of 'VIP Winning Couple'. Ambassador Yossi Sheli, who is a good friend of mine, told us: 'Escape quickly back to Israel.' We came back immediately, and went into two weeks of isolation. "

How was the isolation?

" At first I was in the market. I saw from the balcony people walking, running, living, and I was isolated in the house. But I got used to it. I also realized that the corona came to tell us that in the end, everyone was in the same situation. 

"Do you see the yachts here? They are not moving. And they are of the rich of the world. There are also grounded private planes here. They are all the same. They are all equal."

What do you think about managing the economic crisis?

"I think business owners and the self-employed are doing a terrible injustice. All their lives they pay taxes, and what happens to them in the corona plague is unfair. We must live alongside the corona, open everything possible, and let people make a living. You can learn from other countries how to do it. The Jewish mind "Fine, but you don't always have to invent the world."

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