With tears and hugs, the management of Maccabi Tel Aviv said goodbye to its Greek coach Yannis Sapropoulos
yesterday. Three and a half seasons, spread over 1,181 days, ended after one of the most scorching losses in the club's history, 90:80 to Hapoel Tel Aviv in the Cup semi-final.
"This is not a simple step for the members of the management. Yannis was a friend of theirs, he was a 'Macbeth' no less than them," the source explained in detail yesterday of the move, which only four days after the victory over CSKA seems to no longer happen this season.
According to a source in yellow, what happened after the game was the straw that broke the camel's back.
A riot of a small handful after the game, trying to get to the locker room, was the catalyst to cause an immediate shock.
"As soon as the audience speaks in this way, Maccabi is frightened," the 2022 version of "We Hear the Voices" of December 2002 was explained in yellow yesterday.
The handful who rioted and tried to break into the locker rooms, Photo: Alan Shiver
2.
In the season-opening column it is written here that Sapropoulos starts the season as a lame duck after a shocking Euroleague season, and especially after an ongoing summer confrontation with the "professional" wing in management, which demanded continued contracting with Chris Jones, while the coach insisted on Keenan Evans.
Sapropoulos won the battle, but lost the battle when he compromised on the signing of the three "Blains": James Nanali, Derrick Williams, and especially Jaylen Reynolds, about whom he said a year and a half ago to another European coach not to touch him.
The defeat to the Red Star caused Sapropoulos to push the Israelis to the edge of the bench, and on Tuesday its fruits came in the third quarter of insecurity and helplessness on the floor.
The second breaking point was when Sapropoulos, one of the only Maccabi coaches to receive cheers ("Yannis, Yannis"), responded with contempt whistles in a loss to Kazan in December.
After the first loss in the derby he still received backing, but in the paraphrase attributed to the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov: a gun that did not fire in the first act, nor in the second act - fired in the third act.
Recanati and Oriental.
The fall has fallen, Photo: Alan Schieber
3 The Greek's first game in yellow was against Anadolu Zero, and if and when a suitable coach is found, he will go straight to the Maccabi Euroleague game of the season in Istanbul against the same Anadolu.
Indeed, there is fog surrounding the question of whether Maccabi should sign a coach for the coming years right now, or whether Avi Even will enter the substitute's box again, this time until the end of the season.
But the eyes of the club's heads are already married for next season, and the main candidate is the Italian Andrea Trinkieri, the coach of Bayern Munich.
The club's chiefs were already in negotiations with him before the appointment of Sapropoulos, but the list of demands he presented regarding the "staff" thwarted the talks.
Trinkery.
Will the next negotiations be more successful ?, Photo: Alan Schieber
4 alongside the coach's problem, management will have to reassure its fans who stormed yesterday that Nanali, Williams and Reynolds documented themselves spending four in the morning, and even uploaded it to social media.
"We do not sleep all night, and they go out to party and celebrate until the morning light," explained around the group.
They will then soon have time to discuss the question of the elephant in the room: professional director Nikola Vujicic.
Vujicic.
Forever resilience ?, Photo: Alan Schieber
The vast majority of fans and quite a few voices in the management claim that it is not possible for the team to fail as early as the eighth season, and the professional manager will be "vaccinated".
Vujicic's conception and the construction of the wrong team collapsed again yesterday, and everyone is asking - until when?
Were we wrong?
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