Asi Maman 30/01/2021 11:00
Taleb Twataha (Omri Stein)
The moment that could change Maccabi Haifa’s season is the moment when Maccabi Tel Aviv received a penalty in the 93rd minute of the game against them in Bloomfield. The same penalty that helped her beat the Greens 1: 2 this week and narrow the gap from first place to five points. One of those involved in this incident was Taleb Twataha, the left defender who came off the bench for the final minutes and failed to prevent the penalty squeezer, Matan Hozaz, from breaking from his wing into the Haifa extension. It was another one of those moments where the acquisition player has disappointed since returning to play in the green uniform.
Twataha returned to his youth club with a big bang and with huge headlines, when he is considered a prominent player in the Israeli national team and is 28 years old, an age where he is supposed to be at his peak and upgrade the team – but since returning to Israel he has not taken his place in the squad. Maccabi Haifa for success.
To his credit it can be said that he arrived at a relatively late stage and his first game was against Maccabi Tel Aviv in the fourth round, after recovering from the corona virus in which he contracted when he was still part of Ludogorets’ squad. Like many others, the disease of course affected him as well. “He had a hard time training, he suffered from a bothersome cough, his body and muscles were busy after exertion. He was unable to recover from the corona, “a source close to the actor testified.
The corona slowed Twataha’s recovery rate, making it difficult for him to return to fitness after he recovered from the disease and also leading to recurrent muscle injuries, including an injury to his back thigh muscle. In the national team game against the Czech Republic, Taleb was replaced in the half by his teammate San Menachem because he could not cope with the tension. Despite the injury, Twataha returned to training, looked fit and even started in the squad against Hapoel Kfar Saba in the league, but even in this game he again felt a muscle strain, was replaced in the half and did not play for about three weeks.
This happens to many players who have fallen ill in Corona. Eran Sado, The fitness coach of the Israeli national team, meets footballers who go through it every day. “I do not want to refer to one player or another, but the corona greatly affects the footballers,” said Shado. “There is still no research in the world that can give us an answer to what this virus causes footballers, but I can testify from my work in the field that most players who were sick in Corona were injured in higher percentages after the disease and suffer mainly from muscle injuries, weakness and difficulty in intense activity.”
The fitness coach, who has recently rehabilitated seven players who have been in Corona, testified: “If you compare a footballer to a car, then players who are ill can still reach a speed of 100 km / h and perform the same normal actions required of them, but if before Corona they did it in fifth gear and without A lot of effort from the engine, so now they feel like they are reaching 100 km / h in second gear. To reach the intensity of a simple action they require much more effort from the body. As a result, it is no longer the same player you knew before. Of course everyone takes it differently, the decrease in his ability is different and also the rate of recovery or recurrence is individual, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that the body has undergone trauma. “Fortunately, there are excellent medical and training teams in the country that already know how to deal with it, but for the player himself it is not simple at all.”
While Tuvata tried to recover from the illness in his first weeks at Maccabi Haifa, San Menachem realized that he must fight for his place and showed high ability in games and training, so Barak Bachar chose to place him in the left defensive position and did not give up even when Tuvata was fit to return. From then on, the team got into a good run and everything connected to it, so the new acquisition remained out and started in the lineup only once in the last ten rounds, when even in the few minutes he received from Barak Bachar he failed to impress.
So far, Twataha has only partnered in 372 minutes of league play, in which he recorded 17 ball saves and on the other hand lost 37 balls. Since arriving, he has only started three times in the lineup in league games and in no league game has he finished 90 minutes. In contrast, San Menachem has already recorded 1,322 minutes on the grass, and beyond the defensive contribution, he also managed to cook one goal and score two himself, so that in fact Tuataha was pushed to the bench, his status is devalued and his ability is still far from what was expected of him.
Still, Maccabi Haifa will not give up the home player who returned at the beginning of the season so quickly. Last summer, the team saw him as a player who could change the balance of power against champions Maccabi Tel Aviv, but Tuvata has not been a leading player in his teams in recent years. Although he was a player who started in the Israeli national team, but since leaving the country, he has not played regularly in Frankfurt and Ludogorets.
“When you return from abroad there is a boom because you go back in a sense, even if you return to a team of the same size as Maccabi Haifa that has the conditions of a European club,” he claimed. Ilan Bachar, A mental counselor today and a footballer who played in the defensive position in the past. “Sometimes it’s hard to go back because in a sense it means you have not been able to stay at the high levels of Europe so it is a decline that is hard to digest. “Everyone gets it differently, because sometimes the repetition is self-evident and everything is fine, but sometimes an athlete has a hard time making the right adjustments to the new situation, so he may lose himself.”
In the few minutes he played against Maccabi Tel Aviv in Bloomfield this week, Twataha went down to make a defense, could not stop Matan Hozaz who burst onto the field, and when the brakeman Bogdan Planic tried to close the tie in yellow it was too late and he tripped him inside the field. It was the move that led to Pendel, who brought the winning goal to the host and as a result she also narrowed the gap in the table to five points from the leader. The blame can not only be dropped on Twataha of course, but once he was not a defender who was easy to deal with, and today he is far from the ability he discovered at a younger age.
“Taleb is an excellent player who also contributed to the team even though he did not play much in Germany, so it surprises me a little that he is not able to show high ability in Haifa,” added Ilan Bachar. “We must not forget that beyond that, he also has serious competition with San Menachem and at the end of the day Barak Bachar should not refer to names but only to those who look good in his eyes, but that still means nothing. When I played for Hapoel Tel Aviv 21 years ago, at first Omri Afek barely saw grass, but in the middle of the season he joined the team, played regularly – and together we won a double. What is beautiful about football is that things can still change. “
From the first game against Maccabi Tel Aviv to the last game against Maccabi Tel Aviv, Twataha closes the first round at Maccabi Haifa since returning to Israel. Unfortunately, he ends it as a fringe actor and not with a lead role in the show. There are many reasons for this, but until the next meeting he will have to contribute much more and really help her change her balance of power to run for the championship.
