“Does it seem normal to you that there are 6 foreign coaches, almost 50 percent, in the first league of Israel? I do not.”
In one sentence, he distilled Effie Birnbaum The distress, the difficulty, some would say collapse – of the Israeli basketball coach. The expected signing of Dainius Adumatis at Hapoel Jerusalem will bring the number of foreign coaches to a record (6 out of 13), and will once again flood – and at a particularly high volume – the issue of blue-and-white coaching status.
The question is how, when and why it happened, who is the egg here and who is the chicken. Are the local coaches really, in the post-Gershon-Katzurin-Edelstein-Blatt era, really less good? Or does the pressure not allow teams to give young coaches the keys? Who is actually “guilty” here, or maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle, and there is no right or wrong here?
who is the boss?
“The Israeli coaches are still good, it is not in doubt, it is not something that an Israeli coach goes to Panathinaikos,” says Molly Katzourin“But unfortunately in recent years a trend can be identified – some teams have decided to go in the direction of coaches who are more ‘trained’, the opinionated Israeli coaches who want control of the team, to determine everything from A to T, it is a species that is disappearing in terms of teams.”
Katzourin, one who has gone through all the levels and quite a few countries – expresses what quite a few Israeli coaches think about the teams that employ and should also employ them one day. Revolving doors and wheels, you know. Some of the coaches, by the way, who we approached in favor of this article, refused to comment on it, precisely because of this reason. Another coach, who spoke out, among other things, against the phenomenon of preference of foreign coaches, even asked to shelve his name and quotes from the article.
Many coaches, present and past, with whom we spoke for the purpose of the article, preferred not to speak on their behalf, but a common denominator passed almost all of them: they have no problem with foreign coaches in general, unless the lack of regulation (until last season) led teams to sign unproven coaches. “If you take Yannis Sapropoulos out of the equation, is there anything the foreign coaches who are here today have done, and the Israeli coaches have not?” Said a senior Israeli coach.
And it works the other way too. The worn-out concept of “devaluation in the status of the coach” also expresses, to some extent, the disappointment of some of the teams from the conduct of the Israeli coaches. “Team managers prefer coaches who say thank you for giving them the job and will not express their opinion out loud,” Katzourin continues. “It’s a profile that is more suitable for foreign coaches who come here. They are not connected to the journalists and agents around, and in that respect it is more convenient. Not to mention that their salaries are usually lower.”
“I am Pini, Zvika and the rest of the coaches of our generation – we got the keys, we managed everything, our opinion was significant,” Katzurin continues. “Things have changed in recent years, the incumbents also want to determine on the professional side. When you want to determine professionally as well, you do not want to take coaches who will have a hard time doing it with them. It will create problems and friction, so it’s easier to bring in someone from outside. “Artist” for everything you say and it will also be cheaper. ”
Shmulik Brenner, Who coached Maccabi Rishon Lezion in 2017 and 2018 and even led the team to the Final Four, provided another angle on the issue: “The easier solution for the teams is to bring in a coach from abroad. There are amazing assistant coaches here, there are excellent coaches in the second division as well, but that’s a risk. “It is more” safe “to bring in a coach from abroad, even in outward visibility it is better perceived. The managements prefer to bring in a ready-made coach, rather than bet on an inexperienced coach.”
Forty plus
Zvika Sharaf coached Maccabi South at the age of 24, and was appointed coach of Maccabi Tel Aviv at the age of 32. Pini Gershon became the coach of Hapoel Holon at the age of 26. David Blatt was 34 years old when he received Hapoel Galil Elyon. Erez Edelstein first got a chance as a coach at the age of 30 when he coached Gvat, Oded Katash was 30 in his first job as a coach in the Galilee, Dan Shamir turned 31 when he was in charge of Hapoel Jerusalem, Sharon Drucker was 32 when he coached Hapoel Raanana and Ariel Beit Halachmi got the job in Givat Samuel at the same age.
For several generations, the dry data show that successful Israeli coaches were given the opportunity at a young age. Today, apart from Shai Saglovitch (who did not start the season in Nahariya), there is no Israeli coach in the league whose first number is 3. The youngest is Elad Hussein, 40.
In fact, the last generation to get a real chance was the generation of coaches that evolved in the previous decade, some at the beginning and some towards the end. Sharon Drucker (who even started coaching in the late 1990s), Ariel Beit Halachmi, Guy Goodes, Danny Franco, Katsch and Shamir.
If we look at coaches who grew in the years between 2010 and 2020, only four closed five full seasons or more: Rami Hadar, Arik Alfasi, Nadav Zilberstein and Lior Lubin, who returned big last season to Gilboa / Galil, after not coaching for 5 years due to less successful terms at Maccabi Ashdod and Hapoel Holon. They made not bad achievements, but none of them won the title. The rest shone for the season, two or three – and did not stick a real stake.
And four, for a whole decade, that’s little. very few.
“A new generation of coaches has not grown here,” he says Danny Franco. “Young people do not get the opportunity to jump forward into the water. Not at the beginning of a season, and usually not during a season, when teams change coaches and look for someone a little more experienced. This created a certain vacuum, and this vacuum was mostly entered by foreign coaches, not necessarily with rich experience. “The opportunity to succeed here after they have been less successful elsewhere. It’s a pity that for the most part, the young Israeli coaches do not get the chances.”
Molly Katzourin touches on another point: “We were assistant coaches on the team and then we got a team coach, we did some way. Today the rules of the game changed, there are even non-Israeli assistant coaches, so this path was blocked for some talented young coaches. Shai Saglovitch, for example, “He got the opportunity because he was Alfasi’s assistant for many years. The experience with Modi Maor at Hapoel Jerusalem was not successful, but there have been few such cases in recent years.”
The fact that there is almost no new face also makes the Israeli market, which is already small, even smaller. Some of the veteran coaches have moved on to a number of teams, and once there are no new coaches entering the loop, it reduces the teams’ chances of signing local coaches, easily and materially when they are not backed by exceptional achievements.
And what about Israeli basketball?
The question that currently has no answer is whether, one day, the phenomenon of foreign coaches will have some far-reaching impact on Israeli basketball and Israeli basketball. Effie Birnbaum is sure yes. “Foreign coaches, whether good or not, do not look at the youth, they have no influence on the next generation of Israeli players and coaches,” he states. “We always kept an eye on young players growing up under our noses. We did not always let them progress immediately, but in most cases it was important to us that there was an affinity, and that the coach could help the Israeli player.”
Franco analyzed the impact on coaches’ motivation: “It’s not a problem for foreign coaches to come here, but to have a resume and receipts, and I understand why the Ministry of Sports and the Basketball Association have set certain criteria for quality coaches to come here. “That they have something to strive for and something to look at. Just as no player born with a dream of being just puts out when he is an adult player, no coach dreams of being a short basket coach or a children’s coach all his life.”
“In two or three years, this trend will change”
Shmulik Brenner is an excellent example of a coach who was given the opportunity in the last decade – when he replaced Arik Shibek at Maccabi Rishon Lezion – but was fired a year later and has not returned to the first league since. “It’s a hard lifestyle,” he says, “if you don’t have a certain status, then you have no financial security. Once you were here, once there, once at home. As a father to children it didn’t suit me and I started wanting to focus on other things, like studying sports psychology. It’s a much more stable field. “
The same insecurity accompanies the coaching profession, no matter what industry or class he is in, but in Israel, this is how people feel on the lines – the finger is lighter on the trigger – all the more so when the foreign market opens up to the teams. “Once a larger amount of foreign players started leaking in here, I felt it would be a matter of time before that happened with coaches as well,” Brenner continues. “Because we’re a bit like that, always feeling like the neighbor’s grass is greener.”
“It’s contagious,” Katzourin states. “Some teams started with that, others saw that and say ‘why are they yes and we are not’? This is a phenomenon that exists all over Europe, and this trend has reached here as well. I am not claiming that these foreign coaches are not good, I am just claiming that the coaches here are no less Better than those who came. ”
So is Israeli basketball marching towards long years in which there will be a majority of foreign coaches here? Depends on who you ask. “If we talk for another two or three years, this trend will change,” Franco states. “The criteria will lead to more and more coaches coaching in the coming years in the league, for the benefit of the industry and for the benefit of all. It is not that there will be no foreign coaches here, but there will be coaches with resumes, ones who can give the talented young generations growing up here.”
