Traffic jam on Ayalon routes: What is stopping Elon Almog's career?

Bursts big but fails to persevere, works hard to get better but gets full very quickly.

The great promise of talent with the unconventional body structure is fading, even though everyone is confident "he has the whole package to be a European-level player".

So what will Maccabi Tel Aviv get from him against Maccabi Haifa?

Ron Amikam

03/01/2022

Monday, 03 January 2022, 10:30

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Summary: Maccabi Petah Tikva - Maccabi Tel Aviv 2: 1 (Sport 1)

Maccabi Tel Aviv fans have been in this movie several times in recent years. Elon Almog gave a quarter of an hour to the Pantheon, cooked twice, the trophy holder ran to 0: 2 against Maccabi Petah Tikva and limped to 1: 2 at the end. Sandalwood also kind of faltered, or rather did not further express his ability from the quarter-hour opening. Did Maccabi fans get excited? Not sure. Phrases like "Almog stunk the grass here for two years" ran in a special cluster that opened for him in the "12th Actor" team's fan forum that opened last week. The routine whereby Almog gives the flashes here and there - when he already gets a chance - and does not leverage them for continuity, permeated the bleachers, where the 23-year-old talent is still seen as a 17-and-a-half-year-old boy who rose from youth and has not yet torn a pair of shoes.

Elon, a good boy - not a cliché - Ness Ziona, arrived at Maccabi Tel Aviv at the age of 9 and then disappeared and went after a friend of Hapoel Tel Aviv.

It took Maccabi Tel Aviv three years to bring him back.

So much so that he had intensities that made the professionals laugh about the day his voice would change and his growth graph would stop.

The question was where.

In almost every age group he played in, one yearbook was jumped forward, in youth even two were jumped.

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To the full article

"He's inside an unconventional body structure."

18-year-old Elon Almog (Photo: Yossi Tzipkis)

Coral was the kind of player that does with the ball as much as they please, but when it comes to a combination of physical size, high speed and tremendous power, it's even more stimulating. The coral has a sculpted lower torso: buttock muscles, four heads, hamstring and very massive twins, as if a cartoonist had drawn them. He has explosive power, and an excellent kick in the right foot. Uri David, who coached him in the youth department, and recently made headlines after his dismissal from Maccabi Tel Aviv, was required to comment: "He is in an unconventional body structure. He was much bigger and faster than everyone and it did not hurt his technical ability, he was not awkward. Jump The same year just because he had to be challenged. "

"Not only that. He does not stop working." David even remembers messages he would receive from Almog near midnight, "Uri, can he arrive at 8 in the morning in Kiryat Shalom?", Just to have another private training. "The desire to get better exists in him dramatically. Sometimes he would do things in training himself, to improve his strong qualities. It would make him feel good about himself."

"He has the whole package in order to be a player at a European level," Avitan said of him this week, who even before coaching him at Hapoel Hadera, met him as the youth coach of Hapoel Beer Sheva. "Ayalon can easily fit into second-tier leagues in Europe like the Netherlands and Belgium. Physically, he is something out of the ordinary. Bursting power, speed, power, coordination is relatively good for a person with such abilities."

There were those who compared him to Barak Yitzhaki, but Elon Almog is very reminiscent of Yaniv Katan, with the small running steps, changes of direction and kick.

"He has more potential than a small Yaniv," David ruled this week.

Elon Almog not only mentions great players, he already had to be a great player, only it has not happened yet.

At 23 he has yet to reach 10 goals in the Premier League, he has relatively dismal numbers and more dismal minutes of play.

He has played an average of 47 minutes per game since rising to adulthood, these are numbers of a player who sometimes develops, sometimes integrates and usually does not spend 90 minutes, if not in the minutes of the game, then in the minutes of his effective game.

"In Hadera, too, he was not stable, he had a rare 20 minutes and then he would suddenly lose a ball," Avitan Nisso explained of Almog's magic minutes concentrate.

Won comparisons to him.

Barak Yitzhaki with Elon Almog (Photo: Kobi Eliyahu)

He came to Hadera after doing the regular route for a talented player at Maccabi Tel Aviv: to undergo initial training at Betar Tel Aviv / Bat Yam. Even before that, he started getting credit at Maccabi Tel Aviv. The frames, and Moshe Hogg was already willing to put a million and a half euros on half a ticket, only that Maccabi Tel Aviv stood on its hind legs and did not let go. The winner was Hapoel Hadera, which he reached with great fanfare, scored three goals in the first two games and until the last game, in Garbage Time, Saturday from conquests and slowly began to lose minutes of play as well.

There is no person who does not know Elon Almog who did not give Eran Zehavi as the opposite example to Elon Almog. "It's not Eran Zehavi whose inner drive drives him from game to game. Elon reaches satiety at very early stages, even of a game," said one of those whom Almog touched on during his unresolved career.

When he returned to Maccabi Tel Aviv after his year of scrubbing at Leumit and Hadera, he got the chances from Moladen Ivica but had a hard time getting a stake.

Things got more complicated when Gioriogs Donis arrived.

Almog received good credit from Patrick Van Leven, who replaced Donis during the time he was in isolation - the Champions League game - but Donis chose to come up with a different lineup and unlike most of the last coaches at Maccabi, was not dying for a rotation.

Elon Almog entered the market, not to mention dizzying.

From a situation where he was a football star, wherever he played, including the youth and boys national teams, he became another player, and was unable to adapt to it.

Even in the young team he did not rise, gave one good game in Montenegro and did not add, and was a partner in the failed campaign that included an embarrassing loss in the Faroe Islands.

Open in a storm and fade quickly.

Elon Almog in Hadera (Photo: Shlomi Gabay)

Almog was waiting for a change and was sure that here, with the appointment of Van Levon, who had previously seen tremendous potential in him, everything would change. But Van Leven is a regular stanza coach: two extremists as of old, on the line. Do not like players with "inverted leg". Extreme - at Van Leven - reaches the latitude or a little before and exits latitude. But above all, the results spoke for Van Leven. "Practically Patrick's wish was to flip him forward. It would have given him more credit points because he was with him in academia, but when Patrick came the team ran and there was an abnormal streak of good results, and it was hard to get into the rotation," said David, assistant to Van Leven.

The drying did its thing. Coral would wait for his chance like a bull before entering a bullring. Just to prove. "Because he's over motivated, his desire to succeed makes him make mistakes in the game," David explained. "He tries first to please himself, and then those around him. He enters in X minutes and has to prove himself, so he enters the vortex." Van Leven tried, through appreciative personal conversations, to give him hope, but Almog continued on his line: hungry for training, seven in games.

When he came in and did a good job, he would have thought that the nightmare was over, that he had returned to the king's road, but in the seniors, and in the seniors of a big, easy club and Maccabi Tel Aviv that has a large staff even for its needs, the struggle is not even on a daily basis. Even after his excellent fragments of the game against Maccabi Petah Tikva last week, he was still replaced in the 65th minute.

"He knows how to do everything, only to lower the level of pressure by one or two degrees." Elon Almog (Photo: Berni Ardov)

It is difficult to know what will happen now with Almog and its psychological aspects. Mladen Krestic found in Coral speed and courage, a matter he talks about all the time with the players. He requires brave players in the last 30 meters of the pitch to make an impact. Almog gave it in the first quarter of an hour against Maccabi Petah Tikva Big Time, his problem was never the outburst, but the perseverance.

Avitan: "Krestic did not know him before and what he has seen so far has been the anomalies. He also felt in Hadera that things were escaping him and because he wanted to he came under pressure. In the top teams there is no patience - either you bring produce or you sit outside." There are those who argue that Almog should have gone out for a year of ventilation in a smaller club, taken over, shown abilities and regained confidence, in himself and in him. In Kiryat Shmona they searched, in Hadera they were happy that he was coming now, and January was still young.

Maccabi Tel Aviv wanted him to be like Yonatan Cohen, who underwent a fairly similar training course, with a lot of zobors on the way, but always, did not go into a spin, and today he stars in Serie B. A sports psychologist he once spoke with claimed that Almog prevents external things and not internal drives.

David testified: "The feeling at the club is that when it explodes, it will explode like a volcano. It's already bubbling. Unconventional things are seen from him in training. When it arrives, it will be like a tsunami. "60 minutes and 60 minutes for 90, we will have another player."

Avitan: "He knows how to do everything, only to lower the level of pressure by one or two degrees."

Another source said this week: "When he makes this leap and brings his adolescence - he will be an actor's shell."

Tonight in Haifa, or at some point in the future, it will happen.

or not.

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