1.
In September 1993, Maccabi Haifa returned from Russia, after its first game against Torpedo Moscow in the European Cup Winners' Cup.
This was Haifa's first European season ever, and when we sat down on the special plane leased by the club, owner Yankele Shachar passed between the passengers - players, journalists and escorts - and handed out glasses of whiskey to everyone.
Shahar then finished his first year as owner and president of the group.
And here, he is now celebrating 1,000 games as the owner, and in about a year he will celebrate 30 years, in a position that attracts a lot of attention and media exposure, even though in Shahar's business portfolio, Maccabi Haifa is a relatively small part.
The combination of business and football gives tremendous prominence and exposure.
Everyone knows Shahar;
Who in the general public will recognize Shmuel Harlap or Zvi Neta, large car importers who do not have a football team. The laughter of fate is that in the late 1970s Shahar was actually the sponsor of Betar Jerusalem, and many remember the yellow-and-black outfit on which the Volvo logo appears.
Which brings us to the arrest of Moshe Hogg, the owner of Betar Jerusalem, whose publications are difficult on a personal level, but also put his team on the verge of losing their way. Itself in the coming months in a state of insolvency, and will be required to sell its valuable players.
She may be a candidate for relegation to the National League.
Lame for three years.
Moshe Celebrates, Photo: Udi Citiate
Football is probably the most deceptive and problematic business to maintain. Quite a few talented businessmen were tempted to enter, and the sages in them hurried out. Football management is a bottomless pit, in the world and in Israel. It's not enough to be a millionaire to own a big club, you have to be a billionaire. Mitch Goldhaar, Yaakov Shachar, Izzy Shretzky, Alona Barkat and Yoav Katz are billionaires, most of them in dollars. Their stable business allows them to conduct themselves quietly and for many years in their football teams, and most of the time they also go through periods of failure on the pitch. Shahar, for example, has to date invested more than a billion shekels in Maccabi Haifa. Goldhaar and Barkat, as well as Shretzky - although he owns a small club like Kiryat Shmona - have invested close to NIS 200 million each.
The problem starts with the businessmen who are not in the league of the greats at the level of abilities and deep pocket, and are tempted by the great media exposure, which drags them into an adventure that is great in their dimensions.
There are those, such as Eyal Segal from Maccabi Netanya, who conduct themselves with restraint and responsibility, and are aware of their limited financial capabilities.
Segal was the man who brought former star Benny Lem back to the club, this time as coach;
For this, he and Maccabi Netanya needed the generosity of Yaakov Shachar.
The owner of Haifa employed Lem as the coach of the Haifa youth team, and with success.
One of the nice features of Dawn is that it does not hold anyone in power, even if it is successful.
And he has another interesting feature: listening to the will of his audience.
For years, Reuven Atar ran there as a coach.
The pressure was heavy, including in the local media, until Shahar agreed, not with great enthusiasm.
Atar failed as a coach in Haifa and was fired;
Atar's obsession with the stands is over forever.
Unlike a celebrant, whose failure brings about a boycott of fans and subscribers, at Hapoel Tel Aviv the owners, the Nisnov brothers, are not popular with the crowd (to say the least), but the crowd is loyal, and the number of subscribers regularly ranges from 8,000 to 10,000. By far, there are barely 1,000 subscribers this season.
A successful football manager in Israel must have a total of qualities without which he has no chance of surviving at the top: big money, a clean and honest business reputation, a restrained ego, giving space and respect to the professional team, respecting players and keeping distance from them, caring for a pleasant stadium with respectful audience , And most importantly - staying on the ground of reality, so as not to become a tragedy.
Celebrating, it turns out, did not have all these features.
2.
This week something went wrong with the two super footballers, Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
Messi, congratulations, scored his first goal in the French league in the Paris Saint-Germain uniform.
Even Ronaldo, it turns out, failed to prevent the dismissal of his Manchester United coach, Ola Gunnar Solskjaer.
Despite Ronaldo's joining hype and goals, especially in the first weeks of his signing, the Norwegian coach's United (who have just been signed for three more seasons for £ 25m) have been collecting a long trail of embarrassments and defeats for years, and are no longer a real force threatening the Premier League.
What really humiliates is that the city's second team, Guardiola's Manchester City, not only took the hegemony in the city, but also a regular candidate in the battle for the crown in the league.
The quartet that kidnapped United last Saturday against Watford was already too much even for the forgiving management at the Nightmare Theater.
And Messi?
The artificial and forced connection to PSG shows that this adventure will be recorded mainly in the history of his life on Wikipedia, no more than that.
Ronaldo and Messi are learning these days that even they can not always change the world.
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