Second yellow: Maccabi Tel Aviv must not keep Aitor Karanka - voila! sport

Premier League Goal of the Season Clip (Sports1)

With all due respect to Maccabi Haifa's third championship (probably, well), it seems that there are other things on the agenda that need to be discussed. For example, Maccabi Tel Aviv's crash in the league and cup, in six months, that made every fan in yellow miss the delusional Lito Vidigal, and all thanks to Aitor Karanka, who only the Canadian authorities understand how and why he took responsibility for Mitch Goldhar's soccer team.

Maccabi signed Karanka at the beginning of January, after Vladen Ivić, who had arrived to bring the championship back into area code 03, got a bit stuck with the whole thing, realized that the squad he had built was not a hit and cut it easy to coach in the steppes of the Russian Caucasus. Those were the days when Maccabi Haifa took over the league, but Karanka got into the business pretty quickly - beating Ashdod, faltering in a draw against the ridiculous Beitar Jerusalem and then dismantling Maccabi Haifa and opening the championship fight completely.

It almost looked like bingo, and then came the Tel Aviv derby, five days later - and Hapoel came out a sucker when it didn't win. Then came another tired draw against Sakhnin and a loss to Maccabi Netanya and Maccabi was already looking down on the title. A victory over Hapoel Be'er Sheva in the next round once again restored hopes, and here we stopped. Two weeks later, against Hapoel Jerusalem, Maccabi had already lost (having already led) a game in which the people who seemed to have the least faith in the team's chances of achieving anything this season were actually its players.

An unnecessary nail in the coffin. Karanka (Photo: Maor Elkeslassy)

But hey, there's still the trophy left. In other words, there is no longer a cup, because Maccabi lost in the semifinals to a team whose existence was in doubt in the summer, and only ugly moves that included flexibility of all possible principles and the complete destruction of another team made its existence possible. And here, I hate to say, was the stage when Maccabi Tel Aviv had to send Karanka home.

The Yellows' surrender game against Maccabi Haifa on Monday was just another unnecessary nail in the coffin. Even when the Yellows led, it seemed like they didn't believe themselves. Although everyone did their part according to the circumstances in those minutes - Maccabi Haifa played it "worried" about the possible loss of the championship, Maccabi Tel Aviv played the same team with some self-confidence (and only Hapoel Be'er Sheva really fantasized about it), it didn't take too long before the outgoing and incoming champions took off the kaffeh that put their opponent in place. And all without too much effort, embarrassingly.

In the end, since Barak Bachar left Izzy Sharetzky and moved to Hapoel Be'er Sheva and then Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Tel Aviv has won the championship only twice. The remaining six championships handed out since then were won by Behar. 2:6, a result that surely evokes beautiful memories in Kiryat Shalom, and evokes longing for the days when they were the ones who took off the opponent's kaffa that put her in place.

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Maccabi Tel Aviv is finally getting out of it. Bachar (Photo: Maor Elkeslassy)

And Bachar is actually the key to Maccabi Tel Aviv's next season. Unless something strange happens, he won't coach in Israel next season. Maccabi Tel Aviv is finally freed from the shadow of the man who knew how to take two peripheral teams and make an empire out of them at the expense of the yellows from Tel Aviv, whose goal is to be that empire. True, Ben Mansford's return could also have positive effects, but we've already seen from Ivich's (and Zahavi's) comebacks that his second term isn't always a repeat of the first, to say the least. Moreover, Mansford will have to build a balanced, smart squad, one that will know how to deal with the strength of Hapoel Be'er Sheva and what Maccabi Haifa's new coach will have to offer, and this is not an easy task.

But there's one more thing Goldhar needs to do – and it's worth doing quickly, in part to make a positive impact on the squad for next season: send Karanka home. To do what we didn't do after losing in the semifinals, or after losing to Hapoel Jerusalem in the round of 25. Maccabi Tel Aviv cannot afford breathing space and endless patience, and what doesn't work - just doesn't work.

• sport
• Israeli football
• League

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• Maccabi Tel Aviv Football