All the goals of Maccabi Tel Aviv striker George Yovanovic this season (Sport1)
The headlines in the Turkish media probably went one step too far and too soon, but we should start getting used to them.
"Nuri Shahin asked the management to add Djorja Jovanovic as a replacement for Haji Wright," it was claimed in Turkey.
The striker of the US team is in demand in the Premier League and may bring an eight-figure sum to Antalyaspor's coffers. Shahin saw the Maccabi Tel Aviv Serb in action in the training match between the teams during the World Cup break. This connection in itself still does not bring Jovanovic closer to Turkey, certainly not at the price of two million euros , but one can certainly appreciate that a possible sale of the Serbian is a matter of a good offer. Jovanovic has done enough in Israel to move on. He met the goal he set for himself when he arrived.
Jovanovich arrived at Maccabi Tel Aviv with the clear goal of continuing his journey back to the places they predicted he would end up.
Rabbi Shelbyt's plan began with a return to Serbia to Cukrichic, where he regained consciousness with a flurry of goals in a short time.
Phase B was a move to a bigger club and a return to the Serbian national team.
Jovanovich may not have been able to reach the European group stage with Maccabi Tel Aviv or win the title last year, but he did provide numbers that would allow him - perhaps already at the end of the season - to mark this stage as well, and move forward.
The hourglass has turned.
The Serbian, who was called the future pioneer of Partizan, has already lost enough years.
This is not the time to get stuck.
The hourglass has turned.
Yovanovich (Photo: Ariel Shalom)
Now let's go back.
Jovanovic was 17 years old when Partizan introduced him as a senior player.
"I am proud to present to you the real gem of Partizan and the future of the club. I am truly convinced that we have foreseen the creation of the lethal pair Jovanovic - Vlachovic," said the sporting director at the time, Ivica Iliev, adding a joke: "He will wear the shirt number 99 because he will score like two strikers 9".
Jovanovic was much more than a great promise of Partizan.
His story is the story of a boy who, at the age of 5, traveled with his family hundreds of kilometers from Posavic to Belgrade to watch Partizan from the stands.
A boy who fulfilled a dream to play in the club of his dreams.
He was discovered by "Uncle Treba", the legendary scout of Partisan Dušan Trubijevic, at the age of 10 and for several years he would only come from his home for the games of the children's teams, until he was old enough and moved to live with his grandfather and his brother in Belgrade.
Jovanovich grew up, was educated and breathed only a partisan.
His dream was to play in the seniors and score a goal in the derby against Red Star.
That dream was shattered.
"Jovanovic is the future of the club, there is no doubt at all, but he needs to work on his shortcomings which are more related to the way he moves in certain situations and not just work on personal abilities," said Marko Nikolic, the coach who gave him his senior debut.
Nikolic and Jovanovic had quite a few conversations.
"The opportunity will come," the coach assured him.
It did not happen.
Players left and came, Nikolic also left and Jovanovic mostly felt that he was not counted.
Despite the paucity of opportunities, in the background he heard fears.
"For two months I've been hearing people say that I'm not a player at the level of a partisan, that I don't have the qualities. I showed them the truth," he said after one of his last games.
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"I showed them the truth."
Partizan Jovanovic (Photo: GettyImages, Srdjan Stevanovic)
He couldn't bear the feelings.
Sad and betrayed, he tried a detour.
Two and a half years after Iliev's explosive statements, Jovanovic was sold to Lokeren for only 450,000 euros.
What followed was an unfortunate sequence of circumstances.
Bad choice of teams and one global pandemic.
Jovanovic survived half a year in the professional chaos of the shattered Lucerne, signed in Cadiz and suffered total neglect, rolled to the question in Cartagena from the third division and after being stuck in Spain for months during the corona virus, confessed and rolled into a legal dispute with Cadiz, found himself a free agent at the end of 2020.
Signing Chokrichki was the first step on the way to rebuilding his career from the ruins.
In Serbia they claimed even then: "Partizan's diamond that disappeared from the football map is coming back."
Jovanovic is not one to give up.
"He is very committed, even off the field. Always asking for advice, asking what he did wrong and what he should have done," Miroslav Voličević said about him in the past.
The former defender of Partizan served as a sort of mentor to Jovanovic when it came to the seniors.
Both were born in Lapusavic.
For Voličević, Jovanović was not only a talent but also a little brother who needed to be looked after.
"He's not satisfied with just scoring goals, he wants to learn and knows he has a lot to improve. He's an exemplary guy when it comes to behavior. He takes every training game as an opportunity to prove that all the talk about him in the last two or three years as a potential is true."
In the last two years, great things have happened to Jovanovic on the grass.
Pay attention to the numbers.
He scored 20 goals in 32 league games in a Chokrichki uniform and since moving to Maccabi Tel Aviv a year ago scored exactly 20 league goals in 32 games.
10 out of 20 of his league goals are ones that raised Maccabi Tel Aviv to 0:1.
All of his league goals were scored in games in which the team won except for one, the equalizer in Kiryat Shmona two and a half weeks ago.
He also scored three winning goals and the decisive goal that lifted Maccabi Tel Aviv to 1:2 against Maccabi Haifa last season en route to a 1:3 victory.
In short, he is one of the best decisive players seen here.
A game changing player.
He went through a crisis with his departure.
Stipa Pritza (Photo: Danny Maron)
Jovanovic is several sizes bigger than the Premier League - in athleticism, physicality and numbers.
He has an unmistakable combination of incredible lethality in front of goal, playing with two feet, parrying, speed, agility and an obsession with goals.
He is very diverse in his game, very team-oriented, his passing ability is high, his technique is surprising, he is effective with his back and with his face to the goal and, in general, he is a constant threat to any opponent.
His integration was amazing.
The Serbian scored six league goals in his first six games, and then, like the rest of his friends, experienced a drop in the top playoffs where he "settled" for three goals.
Even in the current season, there were moments of crisis after the departure of the friend Stipa Fritza and the red against Kiryat Shmona, but when you look at the numbers, you get a completely different picture.
Jovanovic's longest drought last year was four league games without a goal.
These are rare machine numbers.
A foreign pioneer who came and took over the business here without an acclimatization period.
Jovanovich is probably in the top 10 foreign strikers who came to Israel and top 3 in Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Everyone is talking lately about Oskar Gloch's next destination.
Very soon, discussions will also begin regarding Jovanovic's future.
For Maccabi Tel Aviv, the Jovanovic deal was similar to Frederic Rajkovic's at the time - paying a lot of money for a player with high sales potential.
She brought him to get the most out of him while he was there and sell at a profit.
The relative "problem" in transactions of this type is that you have to identify the exact time to make a transaction.
When a good offer comes for such players, sometimes you have to sell even in the middle of the season, otherwise you risk that the property will cool down and its value will decrease.
It's exactly like Chokrichki did when Maccabi Tel Aviv came to her with 1.9 million euros in hand.
Tonight: Beitar Jerusalem - Maccabi Tel Aviv (8:30 p.m.)
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what's the next stop
Jovanovic and Kranka (Photo: Ariel Shalom)
Big Israeli clubs don't always like to look at themselves as a transit station, perhaps as part of the gap between how we add ourselves and how we are seen outside.
There is a lot of money in Israel relative to the status of the league among scouts from outside.
Huge sums are not so quickly drawn for a player from the Premier League, even if you are the gem of a partisan, and Jovanovic will probably need another transition league on the way to the places he dreamed of.
He will celebrate next month 24, he knows that it is a good age for him to move forward.
I'm sure he was told that being stuck in Israel for more than a season and a half is not good for business - yes, even for Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Meanwhile, the Jovanovich plan is about to finish phase two.
The boy who dreamed of the Belgrade derby has long since become practical.
"Who knows what would have happened if I had remained a Partisan. Maybe I would have gone through a big transfer and maybe I would have died there," he previously said after returning to Serbia.
"I realized that it would be better for me to be sold by Chokrichki than by a partisan."
With the numbers in Israel and the call-up to the expanded squad of the national team before the World Cup, one can only guess that the farewell tour from Israel begins now.
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