You didn’t have to be a certified tracker to smell, you didn’t have to be a meteorologist to know it was in the air: from the moment Betar Jerusalem did not depend on itself in the battle for the top playoff, it was clear that Slobodan Drapic and Shai Barda’s hourglass had flipped. If it’s not today, it’s coming tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. And even though it’s delayed, let’s come the dismissals. Despite the lip service in the post that followed, it was not hard to guess that Moshe Celebrate did not really like what he saw from his team. Twitter, you actually read it in black on HTML) – and when the team does not go on for too long, at the end the coach gets the kick.
5 Betar seniors earn more than 24 Ashdod players, Mila was a little pleased, my fans don’t deserve it and my family doesn’t deserve all this cruelty. My heart is broken every week.
– Moshe Hogeg (@moshehogeg) March 17, 2021
And yet, despite the names that will air in the coming days, the truth must also be told: In the current staff situation of Betar Jerusalem, not coach Moshe Hogg is looking – but a magician. Someone who can take a gray center table team, double-tap his finger, and turn it into a team Predatory top. Betar 2021 was built crooked, and all the sick could be seen in last night’s game in Ashdod. Sicknesses that are bigger than a coach can fix – certainly a coach who will come in the short term, like the Betar Jerusalem legend Yossi Mizrahi (who is due to get the job soon).
The instruction book called “How to play football in Betar Jerusalem, Vol. 2020/21” (picture of Eli Ohana with a ball on the knee in the cover) is not very long. In fact, it is not really a page, but a booklet. A thin booklet. Very thin. Well, Who am I working for? There is one page there. On the first page it is written – “Give the ball to Shua and Atar, and Allah Bab Allah” (what do you know, it turns out that the sheikh still left something behind).
The following page has a guide to breathing and exhalation to Antoine Conte (including a suggestion to write the phrase “Do not get a red card” 15 times in French). Jordan Shua and Eliran Atar are two great football players, but they too – despite their tendency to work wonders – are not magicians. And their flashes can get you to a certain place, sometimes even bring you points – but can’t carry you to the top playoffs. Not really.
Moshe celebrates building a large tower with gleaming and gleaming upper floors – a selection of players of all tastes and colors on offense, who can shower the stands with countless moments of contentment. From his cousins and Ohana and Vered, sometimes also Shalom Edri (who was released) and of course Atar and Shua. But beneath those floors, there were no foundations. There was no solid defensive play that could back up the talent and offensive spark.
Uriel Degani was one of the best acquisitions Betar made in the summer, but he was injured once – and is left with a defensive center that includes a 39-year-old stopper (even if he is, possibly, the greatest who played in that position in Israeli football) and a back contact who made a professional brake only from Constraint. Oh, and Or Zahavi was on the bench. And it does not work. Not against MS Ashdod, it turns out, but it will also not work against Hapoel Tel Aviv or Hapoel Haifa in the lower playoffs, certainly not in the districts to which Moshe celebrates direction at the beginning of the season. Not a back that belonged to the top – so he was not at the top either.
Betar Jerusalem has always been a team that lives on attack, on emotions, on emotions. All this is not new, and has been embedded in the club’s history since time immemorial – but whenever Betar was successful, it also had two things – clear professional authority, and a back line. It can be spotted.
The two highest-quality teams created at the club – the mid-1990s, which ran the league and took two championships, and the one that took two championships (including a historic double) a decade later with Gaydamak as owner – were those with an impenetrable center of defense. One had the never-ending Sergei Tartiak, the other had Shimon Gershon and Arik Benado. The stability allowed the front to blossom and do its thing, knowing there was someone to barefoot. When Betar’s offensive talent today looks back, he sees dust balls rolling.
All this does not mean that Drapich and Breda should not have gone. Sometime, it would happen. As mentioned, this is the nature of football – and even writing these great lines would have changed it. But do not think that Yossi Mizrahi, for all his known virtues, will be able to turn the bowl upside down. He too will have to deal with a limited, problematic group full of guys.
He, too, will have to go to the bottom seven playoff games, like to the seven rounds of hell – with a team that thinks it’s top, and meets rivals who come to bar their teeth and fight. Mizrahi, like the last time he received Betar, will simply have to survive – get the club in its fragile condition, and bring him in at the end of the season when he is in a slightly more reasonable condition. How wide they are.This is what will stand the test.
And one more thing: Drapich and Barda did not know many happy moments during their short tenure at Betar. Their seven months at the club, from the beginning of September and the end of March, were saturated with losses (including real defeats), Corona, serious injuries, endless playing pressure and a capricious boss quite.
Still, for one thing it is worth saying thank you to them. Right now – the chance for Aviel Zargari. The ability to take a child from the youth, and give him the stage he deserves in the lineup. It’s not obvious (their predecessor in office did not really do it). It is possible that although at the moment they are mostly remembered for the bad, it is very possible that one day the duo will be remembered as the one who raised the new Betar diamond in the link. As well as the only thing Betar can really take from the nightmarish 2020/21 season.
