Summary: Olympiakos - Maccabi Tel Aviv 4:1/Sport1
The evening before the trip this week of the Peru course coaches for training at the UEFA headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, which began yesterday and will end tomorrow, they received the lecture schedule that awaited them on the way to the long-awaited Peru certificate.
Ran Kozhoch, Ofer Tselappa, Eliran Hodda, Ravid Gazel and the other members of the group that took off for Switzerland, found Aitor Kranka among the lecturers waiting for them.
The Basque, who coached last season at Maccabi Tel Aviv, is one of the rotating lecturers of the European Football Association.
Today, perhaps for the first time since Maccabi Tel Aviv interrupted his path in Israel, Karanka will meet the coaches from the country where he was convinced he would work again this year.
Far from the pastoral town of Nyon near Geneva, Robbie Keen will stand tonight as the head of Maccabi Tel Aviv with the aim of making history.
In the modest town of Bacca Topola in Serbia, Cain and his team will try to take Mitch Goldhar to a position he has not been able to reach since he bought Maccabi Tel Aviv 15 years ago.
In 2011, with Moti Iyonir and Gadi Carmeli, Goldhar tasted for the first time the great taste of success in Europe.
The experience even then was Greek.
Maccabi Tel Aviv passed Panathinaikos after two games and after the second game in Athens, Goldhar celebrated at the small hotel in the Kifissia area of Athens.
So it was his first qualification for the group stage of the Europa League.
Closure?
Goldhar/Berni Ardov
Tonight Goldhar, who arrived in Belgrade yesterday and joined the hotel where the team is staying in Novi Sad, should receive a ticket to the quarter finals.
This is not the group stage of the Champions League in 2015 where he barely saw a goal.
It's true that it's only the Conference League, but the tenants in it are absolutely brilliant.
It is enough to look at tonight's match between Aston Villa and Ajax, which will be refereed by Oral Greenfeld, to understand that Maccabi Tel Aviv is one game away in which it needs to enjoy a huge advantage of 1:4 from a week ago, in order to be among the last 8 in a European tournament.
With two months left until the end of the season, it can already be stated that the decision to say goodbye to Cranka and drop Robbie Keane in Israel was the right one.
It is true that the tasks are not yet completed and that the money is counted in steps, certainly when there is a championship in Israel on the agenda, but Cain and his team knew how to overcome the great crisis after October 7th, to also succeed in losing 14 points in eight games and even the too long drought of Eran Zahavi.
Maccabi Tel Aviv comes to tonight's game in its best period of the season.
In the momentum built in the last six games in all frames.
If there is a moment in this long season that she could have chosen to meet the task tonight, it is this moment.
For Goldhar, the fact that the pressure in Ireland did not affect Keane, is one of the great virtues of the coach.
The articles, the criticisms, the bullying from the media in Dublin towards one of the most famous people in Ireland, did not make Cain ask to leave Maccabi Tel Aviv.
While people here in Israel predicted that Cain would not return to Israel at all after the start of the war, he prepared the ground for the long road ahead of him.
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Why does he have politics?
Robbie Keane/Reuters
Kein said from the first moment he landed in Tel Aviv that he would not mix politics and sports and would not answer any question on the subject, and he has persisted in doing so ever since.
There was not a single press conference where he drifted into other lines outside of the game.
Goldhar appreciates him very much.
He knows what pressures he is dealing with and also what his wife is going through, and hence there is a relationship of respect between the parties, which still needs to be tested for the next season.
Cain also has a contract for another season, but no one will force himself on one side or another.
He stated during the season that he would stay until the end and he stood by that.
He said that he also has a plan to stay for next season and that may be what happens in the end.
Keen has everything needed to continue from Israel to coach in a higher league, certainly in England.
As a former star, he has a toolbox that he carries and certainly has connections.
This season contributed a lot to his development as a coach, even though he only coached in Israel.
The Premier League is not a destination that is big for him and the Championship is a league where he can easily make his first baptism of fire in the British Isles.
He also knows how much each result can affect his future and what can give him the historic achievement of qualifying for the quarterfinals with a team from Israel.
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