Yossi Benyon was elected last week as the professional manager of the Israeli team.
I was a supporter of the Austrian Willy Rotensteiner, who came to Israel four years ago, but because of the agitations of too many activists in the industry he had to work throughout his years here in a kind of "sodomy bed", switch roles, give up, shake, close his eyes and be run over by football.
It happened despite his good intentions, and perhaps everyone's.
It must be said: The Israeli national football team is a workplace that fails.
It is hard to remember a coach or senior official who ended his role on the team without being rolled in feathers and tar by his employers, or the sports media.
I supported Rotensteiner's work here not because I thought he would bring us to the Promised Land - a big tournament considered as a World Cup or Euro - but because the Austrian was an island of sanity in a country where football is run almost constantly in a "moment before explosion" atmosphere, with violence from fans and cops, lack Respect between actors and populist media.
The work environment around this man, the attitude of the players and the players towards him, the press conferences and the interviews with him after games - jumped the package called "Israel team" one grade up.
All this has not gone unnoticed by football fans here.
Fact is, despite the mediocre results Rotensteiner remained popular, and if it was up to the fans - it is clear to me that he was the leading candidate to continue.
But in Israel they prefer to sweep the deep problems under the rug, and still believe that replacing the system head every two to three years will bring good results.
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Notice who the Israeli coaches of the team have been since the beginning of its European era, 30 years ago.
Shlomo Sharaf, Avraham Grant, Dror Kashtan, Eli Gutman and Elisha Levy.
What these five coaches have in common is that none of them, even if they were past footballers, were stars.
They have other qualities that have trained them for the job, but not on the grass.
In Israel, there were really few who were both national team stars and successful coaches.
In fact, I know one of them - Giora Spiegel, who after his successes as a player in Israel, France and the national team, built one of the best teams of Maccabi Haifa in the 90s.
But Spiegel never got the team coaching, because of politics at the top of the association.
Mutla Spiegler also led Netanya as a coach to the championship in 1983, but found it difficult to persevere and retired.
The stars of the Israeli national team for the past 30 years, even if they have tried their luck in coaching or as professional managers, have failed in the bottom line.
Moshe Sinai, Uri Melmillian, Eli Ohana, Eyal Berkovich and Avi Nemani are just examples of those who failed to drag their success from the grass to the coaching position.
There are many reasons for this.
One is the inability to break away from the privileged, comfortable and stellar world, where they were mostly on the receiving end, and make an adjustment to training, where you should mostly give, and you should not be at the center.
Berkowitz, for example, desperately wants to coach the team - but beyond his other qualities that make it difficult for him to be a legitimate candidate, his narcissistic personality will not allow him to fulfill his dream.
We'll be back to the building.
Although he is not the next coach, the professional manager's position is dominant, and Yossi will have something to say about the identity of the next coach, Israeli or foreign.
Like everything in Israel, there is no one who is an absolute consensus, certainly not in an instinctive and evocative industry like football.
Benyon, although quite a few consider him to be the greatest Israeli footballer of all time, and others place him in the big trio - far from being a consensus.
He will have to make a lot of adjustments in his conduct, in setting his priorities and decisions - so that one day it will be possible to positively summarize his work in the team.
His opponents will always remind him of his childish behavior as a senior player in Maccabi Haifa or in the national team, when he refused to change and embarrassed his coaches, Eli Cohen and Dror Kashtan.
It also happened to him at the end of his career, when he heard that he was not included in the starting lineup of Betar Jerusalem, and asked Mali Ohana not to come to the game. When that happens to a player in his early 20s, you say "okay". 40, you wonder if the pattern of behavior does not indicate something that even adolescence will not solve.
One of Judy Cruyff's great successes at Maccabi Tel Aviv was his ability to turn the club into a bubble detached from the Israeli experience - fans, media, etc. - and thereby achieve the necessary silence to build a new model.
Rotensteiner was partially successful in this, and Benyon will have to continue to build an "out-of-body" model, with a lot of knowledge outside of Israel, even if it costs him to disrupt his relations with his friends in Israel.
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The definition of "success" of the work of Benyon and of the coach to be selected - who I hope will be a foreigner - must not be "promotion to a major tournament".
Even such an increase, happy as it may be, can be completely random, and you will not learn about a leap in the industry.
We already know today that the Israeli team has better and better sides, along with bad sides.
Our defensive part is a failure that even foreign coaches can not fix, because probably the education and building of the right model of defensive player from a young age - do not work.
That is why they are trying to civilize Miguel Vitor, a lost move in his advanced age, and after his multiple injuries.
Because Israeli governments for generations have been stingy in granting citizenship to athletes and soccer players, even those who have linked their fate to Israel - see for example the cruel case of Pedro Galban, who scored 123 goals in Bnei Yehuda and was expelled with his family after ten years - it seems the way to A world-wide scouting array.
I would suggest to the building to appoint Bonnie Ginzburg, a former goalkeeper who also played in Europe, to wander among the Jewish communities in Europe and South America, and try to return here with someone who might change the sad fate of the Israeli team.
Aviadp65@gmail.com
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