Maccabi Tel Aviv wants to renew for next season. to build a better team with better quality players, but no less than 18 of its players, who were partners in the season of failure that is about to end, hold contracts for next season as well. This is perhaps the biggest task now facing the incoming CEO Ben Mansford. Barak Itzhaki is already out. Although he will remain working until the end of the season, the field is already in the hands of the Briton who is returning to Israel and it is a real project. How do you renew and rebuild when there are so many players with Agreements for another season?
Only eight players of the team finish contracts. In the foreign wing Andre Geraldes and Rarsh Ilya. With the Israelis Daniel Tanenbaum, Sharan Yeni, Maor Kandil, Ofir Davidzadeh, Eyal Golsa and Avi Ricken. All the rest, including Matan Khoza, who rarely played, Ayalon Almog, who returned from Austria, or Dan Beaton, who woke up only in the second part of the season, have agreements for next season.
The 36-and-a-half-year-old Yeni returned to play in the last round against Maccabi Haifa after a very long injury, and even though the game was at the highest profile and against the best team in Israel, he had a good game. The captain can take advantage of the fact that Itzhaky resigned and try to jump into his role under Mansford, but Yeni recently spoke at the press conference before the semi-finals about how he wants to continue playing and if there are no changes to plans in light of Itzhaky’s retirement, he will most likely be the first player to sign a new contract.
The rest of the players will stand at Mansford’s doorstep and again, despite the failure this season, it is not certain that the current number of 18 players with contracts for next season will not increase because there is great professional appreciation for Daniel Tanenbaum and under Mansford he was a partner in the championship as a dominant goalkeeper. Ofir Davidzadeh may also win the offer since Israeli football does not have a large inventory of left defenders, although Maccabi Tel Aviv will probably want to give a chance to Roy Rabivo who will return from the loan alongside a foreign left defender.
Eyal Golsa will also be on Mansford’s table since there are good professional opinions about him in general and his name will always be one of the most prominent midfielders. Enrique Saborit’s contract was automatically renewed after he met the game quota set for him to continue and, together with Derrick Lucassen, he should be the team’s starting stopper.
-So where will there be changes anyway? Although Maccabi Tel Aviv does not usually inform players with contracts that they are not in the plans, it is possible that precisely in this window and in light of the season’s failure, it will change its ways and move to a new accumulation mode in which players who have not proven themselves will receive a message that they are asked to look for new teams and Maccabi Tel Aviv will supplement their wages. So far this has not been in Mitch Goldhar’s policy and it has meant that players have not wanted to move.
-The team has quite a few players who did not contribute this season, certainly because they were injured, and perhaps we should think about thinning from this direction as well, even at the cost of participating in their wages. Idan Nahmias, for example, is coming back from a long injury of a torn cruciate ligament and it is doubtful that he will get many minutes next season. A player like him who missed an entire season due to injury should consider moving to the loan season in order to play regularly and return to being one of the best stoppers in the league, one who is even invited to the senior national team.
All the legionnaires that Maccabi Tel Aviv brought back last summer have contracts for next season. Eran Zahavi, Dor Peretz, Nir Biton and Yonatan Cohen with contracts for another season. Joris van Overeem also has a contract for next season, but it seems that his story will be relatively easy to deal with, since he can quite easily find a team in the Netherlands, from where he came here, and Maccabi Tel Aviv will not have to contribute a lot of money to his contract.
And there are also players who may be sold. Daniel Peretz is looking for a team abroad, Djorja Jovanovic wants to advance to Western Europe and Parfa Giagon is convinced that he can reach better leagues and after the racism he experienced here, he has another interest in moving elsewhere. All three have not received serious offers from Europe so far , certainly not ones that accompanied official offers to Maccabi Tel Aviv for their purchase.
Here comes the big question regarding Aitor Karanka. Mitch Goldhar had no plans to replace him. The Spaniard has a contract for next season and opinions about him in the club were good, despite the bad results, but when there are so many players signed for another season, the home owner will have to decide if he can stay for another season with close to 20 players who did not bring receipts last season and together with a coach who was here for half a season, finished in third place and failed to qualify for the state cup finals.
