Tikteknu: clip summarizing today's events in sport, 22.3/Sport1
Someone buys his world in one sentence - and last night (Thursday) it was former player and sports channel commentator Omri Afek, who stated: "This is a team that, as soon as something bad happens to it, it falls apart."
Let's play a little game - if only to give this column what was so missing in the game of the Israeli national team.
Therefore, let's leave this sentence echoing in the air for a moment and skip over the usual pitfalls that lie in wait not only for the players of the Israeli national team when they reach a decisive game, but also for the sports media that surrounds them.
It frequently falls into the wrong places, like the Turgeman generation or the Peretz generation - last night Alon Hazan placed in positions that did not suit them and proved that he fell on the wrong generation, even when it comes to the most correct generation of Israeli football.
Cantor didn't fall for the wrong generation - the wrong generation fell for him/GettyImages, ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP
These places deal with the well-publicized conflict with Eran Zahavi, for example, or even with the correct fact in itself, that those who run Israeli football are businessmen of such a poor level, who dream at night of a career as businessmen in a place like the Likud center - if only they could get even first-degree relatives to vote for them .
In this fact there is something to explain a continuous failure, if nothing unexpected happens, we will celebrate his 60th birthday in a few years, but not specifically the failure against Iceland, the iceberg on which the Israeli national team crashed last night like it was the Titanic, even if of adequate dimensions, barely a boat fishermen
"A team that, as soon as something bad happens to it, it falls apart", I rolled my tongue here and there, as if I were an Icelandic attacking player working his way between the non-defensive players of the team, until he found himself face to face with the no-goalie-in-the-goal.
More in Walla!
Strategic location, spectacular view and luxurious apartments: the intriguing neighborhood being built in the center
In collaboration with Aora Real Estate
A footballer who was touched by God, but in moments of crisis collapses into himself.
Benion/Shlomi Gabai
Who is the one whose star usually steps, but as soon as something goes wrong, he falls apart?
If you answered "Yossi Benyon", you may refuse to collect the prize from the Walla offices.
Benyon was a football player who was touched by God.
A rare talent of the kind that is not only hard to find in Israel, but all over the world.
Just like that, only what was given to him in the performance capacity, was subtracted from his operating system.
For example, he stood on the highest springboard in the world - Ajax's magnificent youth department, even when he was 15 years old. Don't be mistaken - Bannion had a magnificent European career, but my God, where would it have been if he had started it at the age of 15 (just remember that Ajax of those Yamim was one of Europe's luxury clubs, just like Real Madrid, Juventus or Bayern Munich and its youth department was considered the best academy in the world)?
So Yossi packed his things, returned to Israel and had a huge talent that slid all the way forward on his own tears.
If the tears in the descending Hapoel Be'er Sheva uniform can be understood, then the refusal to get off the grass, even though the coach (Eli Cohen) ordered him, is unforgivable.
Would you say it's hard for a 15-year-old boy from Dimona to be away from home?
This is true of course, but what can we do if the material from which great athletes are drawn, whether it is a gymnast from Romania, a sprinter from Kenya or swimmers from Hungary, is exactly that?
The years passed, Banyon arrived in Europe years late and nevertheless touched heaven, perhaps because in English it is a bit difficult to complain - which happened to him immediately upon his return to Israel.
Team owners hurt him, coaches didn't appreciate him enough, fans insulted him - we will forever remember from the twilight of his career the successful imitation in "Night Puppet", in which he weeps in tears over the "green monkey" (as a symbol of Maccabi Haifa Ultras) who insulted him on Facebook.
Want to know why the team disintegrates in a second?
Look for the creator's name/GettyImages, Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP
If with the ball at his feet he was amazing in his ability to deceive the opponent's defenders, then as soon as something went wrong, on or off the field, he simply broke down and fell apart: he didn't get angry, didn't curse, didn't hit - but simply collapsed into himself.
Like WHo?
Like the team he built in his image and likeness, and here is the answer to Omari Afek: Do you want to know why the team is falling apart in a second?
Look for the developer's name on the project that says "Euro 2024".
Shouldn't have been there at all.
Hazan/Reuters
The children from the Haim neighborhood
After we realized that the problem is with the developer, it is a bit difficult to deal with the executing contractor.
Still, it is impossible not to linger for a moment on Alon Hazan's embarrassing interview at the end of the game.
Let's take a step back and say that the cantor should not have been there at all.
There was one team that managed to break Israel's constant pattern of disappointments and prove character alongside great performances - it moved us all and its coach is named Ofir Haim.
It could and should have been raised in its entirety, "then-is" as written in legal contracts, to the status of a mature team.
If you really wanted - you could subtract some players from it who didn't make the tough transition from Manger to the seniors and strengthen it with some older players, from Eran Zahavi to Eli Dassa.
Football fans have a short fuse, it's true, but if there's one thing that drains them of patience and even applause after losses, it's only home players who try like crazy and "eat the grass", even when they don't succeed.
If only we could see progress in the team, even a small one - the kind we saw under their Austrian coaches - we would condemn it.
Only in the Israeli national team you are as good as the last tournament for which you failed to qualify.
Cultivating young people?
persistence?
Progress with a heel on the side of a thumb - and all those materials from which sports success is made, which is only achieved thanks to Sisyphean labor?
Don't make fun of the football association.
The team struggled without him, to say the least.
Gloch/GettyImages, Attila KISBENEDEK / AFP
This is how we got stuck with Alon Hazan on the lines and with leadership-professional moves that simply cannot be explained.
Like for example Oscar Gloch.
Gloch is the type of player that a coach who somehow got into a position that is four sizes bigger than him, like Alon Hazan for example, should congratulate him for being there.
Young, passionate, disciplined - and even in top form in a real league.
Not like Dor Peretz, for example, a player who excels against opponents like Hapoel Haifa (due to his last game in the league), but when he has something to prove (due to the match against Maccabi Haifa), he proves that it is possible to pass an entire game, or at least until the coach replaces you, in devotion at the feet of the opponent.
Gloch is considered one of the most promising young talents in the world and in the meantime he is breaking the bank in a league that is not even the "sixth best in Europe" as Avi Luzon's founding sentence said, but is still dozens of meters above our league.
Why not open it?
Lazhan and building solutions.
So Gloch spent the first 45 minutes on the bench and the Israeli national team, with the exception of the penalty scored by Zahavi, was unable to build even one decent attack, which did not prevent Mazhan from saying at the end: "In the first 35 minutes we were good."
In fact, it can be said that the team had difficulty stringing together three consecutive passes while Gloch spent time on the bench, but Alon Hazan at the end of the game neither regretted nor regretted, he didn't even take responsibility, until all that was left was to regret that the man with this great sense of escaping responsibility is being wasted in sports, at who could have been a successful politician.
It is important to remember that Benion and Chant are not the problem, but rather an acute symptom of it/Odi Citiat
blown out of proportion
Which leads us to the national level and the word that repeated itself again and again last night: "proportions".
The Israeli team may have kicked the bucket last night, but let's face it: we are dealing with a team that excelled mainly in the games against Andorra.
That is, the bucket was not full of sporting achievements that brought us this far.
That can be left to the teams that were once at Israel's level, even below it, and reached the World Cup semi-finals such as Morocco, Turkey or South Korea.
The desire to see the team succeed makes us always see the water level in the bucket as if it were the level of the Sea of Galilee, in a distorted way that fosters false hopes.
The opponent can be Denmark (warm greetings from the red card of Revivo the father against Denmark to the one suffered by the son against Iceland), Austria or Iceland, the result is almost always known in advance.
Most of those who spoke last night about proportions meant that in the days when we experience the pain of loss True, why do we complain about the pain of being kicked out of a sporting enterprise. This is true, of course, but if we had proportions, we probably wouldn't expect anything from the team whose only consistent thing is failure. That's why
it's important to remember that Benyon and Hasan are not the problem, they are merely a symptom Its especially spicy.
If we had proportions, we would have no expectations at all from the Israel national team/GettyImages, David Balogh
Let's go back to Banyon for a moment: a huge player with a soft character.
The problem is that when you're on the grass, you have your talent.
When you are required for coaching and management positions, you can only bring with you a personality, like the one that Benion simply does not have.
This is not an exaggeration, but a simple truth that should have stood before the eyes of everyone who appointed him (on the basis of what exactly - his crazy success as the professional manager of Beitar Jerusalem?), but speaking of these: let's say Benion and Chanz, together or separately, go home tomorrow, Who will be appointed under them? The next known failure.
Why? Because the appointees will be the same people who have been running Israeli football from scratch for decades. In the league it is still somehow catching on thanks to our level of identification with our great childhood love.
That is why we have no problem watching the games The most popular team is above us in the league in the name of love - and then move on to watch a Premier League or Bundesliga game, in the name of quality football. We have become so used to this division that the Israeli national team can hardly move us as it used to, as it has neither the charm of childhood love nor the quality required of it.
That's why when talking about proportions, you have to look at the things that are present: the Israeli national team will never again be in a major tournament. Is there anything else so consistent and stable in our lives in this place?
More on the same topic:
Yossi Benayoun
Alon Hazan
Israel's national team