Steven Vanharen Begins Piecing Together Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Next Move

Maccabi Tel Aviv announced on Wednesday evening that Belgian Steven Vanharen, 46, has been appointed as the club’s new sporting director and will head the yellow team’s professional structure, with several major challenges now ahead of him. Maccabi Tel Aviv waited to make the appointment official until Vanharen had formally completed his contract with Hungarian side Győr.

Vanharen’s first task will be to appoint a new coach for the team, assuming the manager who finished the current season, Kenny Miller, does not remain in the role for the coming campaign. It should be noted that 15 days have passed since Miller’s final match in yellow, in the State Cup final, and the club has still not issued any statement regarding the Scot who stood on the touchline. On the one hand, no farewell message or official announcement has been made about the end of Miller’s tenure, and of course there has been no comment on his future for next season.

In one of his interviews, Vanharen addressed the issue of appointing a coach and said that the most important signing in the model is the head coach, because he is the one who “needs to develop the players according to the club’s philosophy. Only afterward do you build the squad and the scouting and data systems around that idea.” So if Kenny Miller does not continue, Vanharen will need to appoint a new coach, who will be a foreigner, an obviously difficult task in the current security climate in Israel. And if one takes into account that the team returns to training toward the end of June, it can be assumed that a new coach will arrive in Kiryat Shalom very soon.

Another task facing the new sporting director is the issue of the club’s leading Israeli players, whose futures are uncertain. The first, and perhaps most significant, is captain Dor Peretz, with whom several talks have already been held, and it can be assumed that now, with Vanharen officially appointed, the club will try to accelerate negotiations with the captain, who finished the season as the top scorer in the Premier League.

Ido Shahar has a contract for one more season with Maccabi Tel Aviv, but the club’s management has offered him a new long-term deal. Shahar has expressed his desire to play abroad, so if the yellow team do not agree to sell him this summer, he will remain for another season and will be free at the end of the coming campaign, assuming he does not agree to extend his contract.

Another key Israeli player is defender Roy Revivo, who is under contract for two more years, but those close to him have already expressed Revivo’s desire to fulfill his dream of moving abroad this summer as well, and this is another challenge Vanharen will have to deal with in the near future.

On the foreign players front, the new sporting director, together with the expected coach, will need to make decisions regarding several players, such as Heitor, Issouf Sissokho, Kerwin Andrade and Amir Saeity, whose futures are unclear and it is not certain they will remain for another season.

Defender Tyrese Asante, one of the team’s standout players last season, could be sold, and if that does happen, and assuming Roy Revivo also leaves, Vanharen will need to find two new leading full-backs for the team.

The Belgian will also have to decide soon on the future of Moldovan striker Ion Nicolaescu, who is recovering from an ACL tear, and at this stage it is unclear when he will be fit for the coming season. According to current estimates, Nicolaescu will only be fit in September, meaning he will miss all of Maccabi’s Europa League qualifying rounds, or, if they are eliminated there, also the Conference League.

Vanharen will have to decide very soon whether to sign a new foreign striker or begin the season with Sayd Abu Farchi and Elad Madmon as his leading forwards.

The yellow team are now beginning a new chapter under Steven Vanharen, and after a season full of different events and the loss of the championship, it appears the Belgian has a great deal of work to do, first to succeed in Europe and then to bring the title back to Kiryat Shalom.