Be efficient - win - Patrick Van Leven, Maccabi Tel Aviv coach, uses this principle in an amazing way • If the Yellows win the championship this season as well, it will be mainly thanks to the deep and quality bench
Nick Blackman.
Very effective off the bench
Photo:
Maor Alexelsi
One of the things that characterized Vladimir Ivitch was his exchanges.
Players who did not play for months suddenly received the credit from the Serbian coach - and turned out to be a great bingo player.
With Patrick van Leven, not every replacement may turn into a bonanza, but the contribution of the complementary players of Maccabi Tel Aviv is simply outstanding.
The complementary players are not usually in the spotlight, they are not always talked about much, they do not always get the credit they deserve - But it may be that they are the substitutes who will make the difference for leading the Premier League table in tomorrow's game against Maccabi Haifa.
But just before we dive into the impressive numbers and figures, it is impossible to ignore the record that Swan Leven broke on Saturday (1: 2 over Hapoel B'Shlosha) When he became the first coach ever in the Premier League to achieve 14 wins in his first 16 games with an average of 91.7 percent success, by comparison, Ivica and Paolo Souza, two of the greatest coaches to land in Israel, recorded 13 wins in the same number of games.
And back to the bench players.
Out of 50 goals that Maccabi scored in the league - 17 were scored by its substitutes.
In other words, 34 percent of the total goals scored this season by the league champions came from the same complementary players.
Not in all cases these goals came precisely after they were bounced off the bench, but this fact indicates that Maccabi can and does rotate the staff and the effect is almost imperceptible.
In this regard, it should be emphasized that three of the Yellows' stars - Yonatan Cohen, who may be on the roster for the first time in two and a half months, Alexander Peshich and Dor Peretz - scored 23 goals alone, which is 46 percent of the league's total goals.
Now do the calculation for the bench players yourself.
You just have to choose
"If Ben Haim is not good, there are Matan Hozaz and Ayalon Almog who do the work. And if Peshich can not play then Itai Schechter enters, or Nick Blackman. These are the strengths of the staff," claims one of the coaches in the league. "They have one player - you do not know what to do. At Maccabi, they just have to choose who they want from the bench."
Nick Blackman, who himself is considered a complementary player (13 appearances, eight from the bench and a balance of three goals), said on the subject: "We make rotations in the squad, and whoever comes in should always be ready. There are not many teams that can win like us, without key players like Jonathan Cohen and Dan Glazer ".
Patrick Van Leven. Record break // Photo: Ami Shumen
By the way, if we had added the data of Maccabi's complementary players in European games, the data would have been even more surprising.
There, for example, Blackman, scored three more goals, but as mentioned, the reference here is only to league games.
Avi Rikan, who has played 22 games this season, including 16 from the bench, is the player who contributed the most as a substitute (four goals).
Blackman and Schechter followed with three each.
You will then find Hozaz and drag with two each.
But the contribution of the complementary is not only in the gates, but also in the cooking.
For example, Hozaz, who started the season only six times in the squad and came off the bench 11 more, scored four goals.
All of Maccabi Tel Aviv's bench players have contributed a total of 11 assists in the Premier League this season. If you add this figure to the 17 goals they scored - it is a involvement in 28 of the 50 goals scored by the team (56 percent). And when the complementary players give such output, Van Leven knows that even if his team gets into trouble in this season's game with Sami Ofer - he will always have a rabbit to pull out of his hat.