You can deal with the performance of the professional manager and the coach, how the goalkeeper stood, who started in the lineup, and who was replaced and who replaced and what the big star did and how he missed the penalty. The preoccupation with these things is just like the preoccupation with what the observers said before October 7, why combat helicopters were not launched, where was the head of the IDF that day and when did the prime minister receive a report. , but in steering.
The Israeli national team, just like the State of Israel, is mistaken in its conception. Whoever thinks that it is possible to beat a multi-armed enemy with limited personnel and a dubious leadership avenue, thinks that it is possible to go up to the Euros without a healthy football infrastructure and with businessmen who do not understand anything about what they are supposed to manage.
Israel national team players before the game against Iceland (Photo: AP/Darko Vojinovic)
Yesterday’s defeat to Iceland 4:1 is the coming of Israeli football and those who manipulate it: over-expectations, (series) over-education, over-ego, over-estimation of the Israeli footballer who grew up in local habitats, over-interference by businessmen and over-mixing by the coaches. In short, what is more is less. We are less good, we are less trained, we are less fit, and therefore, we are less successful.
The myth about Israeli football is the myth about Israelis in general, a myth that was broken on October 7. The smugness with which this branch is conducted in relation to its achievements is part of the sin of arrogance of the entire nation. A team that represents a population of a country that is only 5 times larger than the average amount of audience that comes to our Premier League games every week, showed that when 11 Icelanders meet 11 Israelis it becomes clear that, despite the clear numerical inferiority in the size of the population, the Icelander is bigger, stronger, faster, smarter, more efficient more and above all more modest.
The Israeli national team has already lost decisive games to Colombia, Denmark, and Scotland, but none of them were as small as Iceland: in the number of soccer players, in the soccer tradition, in the strength of the league, and in soccer itself. And yet, in the summary of this terrible game, we were defeated 4:1. And this is a team that has never beaten us until yesterday. I mean, we don’t go backwards, we run backwards. And that’s faster than the Icelanders run forward.
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Until the first goal that the team conceded, maybe a little before, when Iceland missed a goal, the game was one team. And yet, even in this situation it was difficult to see that the goal was in the air. The team pressed, got the ball, moved it through the wings and tried to get balls into the box, but the majority was inaccurate, the wing players suffered from excessive dribbling, the link was not organized, and we did not get quality situations. When there are so many holes in the squad – for various reasons – some of them could be filled, and there are so many constraints that require changes in positions, even an excess of goodwill and an offensive style has an expiration date.
Israel scored first, in a great minute. 30 minutes leaves enough time until the break – where the momentum, positive or negative, usually stops – to score the second goal. And Israel did exactly the opposite. She took 15 minutes plus injury time to try and keep the score. Obviously, these were not the instructions, but football is so scarred by disappointments, trying to preserve even the fragile results, the small 0:1, only that Israeli football does not have defensive players, education to play defense and the DNA of defense, to try and preserve something that is not You can keep it. Instead of taking advantage of the momentum, continuing on the path that brought the team to the penalty, the players went into a fit of desire to save the homeland.
Eran Zahavi celebrates the winning goal against Iceland (Photo: AP/Darko Vojinovic)
Gabi Kanikovski, the shortest player on the field, jumped on an Icelandic lighthouse and hung onto it, instead of letting him hit the ball the way the Icelanders had been doing until then – inefficiently. But Kanikovski committed a foul, which resulted in a free kick, which resulted in an equalizing goal, and from here the Icelanders realized that they could steal even another goal from the Israelis, but the Israelis are irresponsible, improvising, and inconsistent enough to steal more. Just look at the second, third and fourth goal: our most senior defender, a player who received his football education in Portugal, looks at the ball and does not follow the player. After that there is nothing to add. This is the essence of defensive play.
And this is the story of yesterday’s game: patchy composition, poor decision-making on the lines and on the field, inaccuracy, lack of faith, and in more blunt words: a collection of nothing and nothing. There is no match between talking about Israeli football and the level of performance of his football team.
Yesterday’s team looked simply untrained, irresponsible, did not understand its position, its size and the size of the class itself, and above all, scared. From what will happen in the game, from what will happen after it.
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Therefore, if we mark the culprits, we will miss the main point: everything here is a failure. The choice of players was wrong, unbalanced, emanating from ego games – Zahavi’s room story, Weissman’s disciplinary problems – or the automatic waiver as if it was a fate for Atzili, Davor or Saba. The Israeli national team did not appear in its strong lineup, did not realize its potential, and gave up too quickly.
The last success of the Israeli national team – if you can call it that, when you win once out of six games in the campaign – was with SHG in the 1990 World Cup qualifiers. Then the two coaches, Schneur and Grundman, decided to give up Uri Malmilian, Avi Cohen from Tel Aviv and Zahi Armali and go for names Not attractive like Shlomo Iloz, Ephraim Davidi and Nissim Barda. And yet this was a team that didn’t pretend to anything, didn’t play adventurous football, didn’t gamble, but played according to its tools. And as she only won once, she only lost once, and always had the feeling that she was not falling behind any opponent on the court.
And if the selection of the staff was problematic, the selection of the composition was terrible. For example, the use of Dor Turgeman as a left winger. Yes, he has a dribble, and breaking power, but he is a wide player, not an agile winger. If there is no left wing player – you don’t have to play with wings at all. You can change the lineup, it’s not sacred. It certainly can’t come after a campaign by Willy Rothensteiner who insisted on playing with three brakes when he didn’t even have two. Coaches who insist on a formation, will not be flexible in more acute things. “True to my way” is a great cliché for those who have no way.
Then, in an even more ludicrous decision, the professional team decided to leave out of the team Oscar Gloch – the most creative player in Israeli football, even when he is not at his peak – Muhammad Abu Fani (the most successful Israeli abroad) and even Neta Lavi who is one of the two back link players which is really their natural role. Then, to put in their place Dor Peretz as a definite back midfielder, and not as the best box-to-box player in Israel, and the creative Gabi Kanikowski to strengthen Eli Dessa’s wing. And this, in a game with an opportunity to get a chance to qualify for the Euros. A game from which there is no way back .
The Israeli national team concedes the third goal against Iceland (Photo: AP/Darko Vojinovic)
And there is the matter of preparation. It is impossible to prepare a team for such an important game in three days that also include a flight. It is not possible. The day the association lost the management of professional football in favor of the manager, it lost the national team. With all due respect to the war that stopped the activity for a month, there is no real reason to hold a league round, four days before a national team match. It hadn’t happened before, and there was no reason it would happen today.
It’s not the rush thing at all, but the preparation thing. The fact that the team looks untrained is not only in the coach’s ability to instill football in it, but mainly in the tools at his disposal. Without training – neither during the season nor before a game – it is impossible to leave a minimal fingerprint that will arrange the players so that they know what they can achieve in the game, in order to achieve the result.
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We don’t have enough space for five consecutive columns to say what needs to be done, and we, the media people – even the veterans – will have to maintain modesty and not give advice in areas we don’t always understand, but one thing is certain: dealing with the identity of the coach and the right team of players, after Any failure, bankrupt.
We have already tried everything: a foreign coach, a foreign professional manager, a decorated coach, a coach who grew up in national teams, a pair of coaches, a coach who is a professional manager. And most of the times we failed.
We also tried veteran players, and only young ones, and a mix between them, and even naturalized. And we failed. We tried an association chairman from Po’el and a chairman from Maccabi and a consensus chairman, and we failed.
We tried to grow from the bottom and strengthen the youth teams in order to drop talented players to the senior team, but maybe we did it too fast or too little, or too much, or we are too clueless. To be sure, we did it with such intensity that we didn’t have the time to examine the results over time.
Therefore, it is important to decide on something – and like the structure of the leagues which has maintained stability for 12 years in a row – and give it time, whether to continue with what has been up to now or choose something new and give it a long way.
What is certain is that we will not advance to the next World Cup because the format is too big for us and we need to be good enough for a long time, build squads from many options and not constraints, train more, know our place and play according to our strengths and not against our weaknesses.
The more we persevere on the path, the more we will begin to achieve results. We will not persevere, and we will change after every failure – we will only go further back.
