Assistant coaches Juan Torrijo and Ruben Martinez will join head coach Oscar Garcia in returning to Maccabi for the 2014/15 season
Juan Torrijo and Ruben Martinez have agreed terms at Maccabi and will join newly reappointed head coach Oscar Garcia as his first team coaching staff for the forthcoming season. The two were the main figures in Garcia's professional staff when the Spaniard led Maccabi to their first Israeli Premier League title in ten years during the 2012/13 season. They also followed their boss to English Championship side Brighton & Hove Albion at the end of that championship season.
Juan Torrijo Navarro arrived at Maccabi in the summer of 2012 after sixteen seasons in the same function at the successful Spanish football club Valencia. During that time he shared with them their glory years, when Valencia were two-time winners of the La Liga championship, two-time winners of the Copa del Rey, two-time winners of the Spanish Super Cup and one-time winners of the UEFA Cup and the European Super Cup. He was also with the club when in two successive seasons, 2000 and 2001, they reached the finals of the Champions League.
After three years as the Barcelona youth team's goalkeeper, Ruben Martinez Caballero made his anticipated move to the Catelonian club's third squad (FC Barcelona C). A year later he moved up to the club's second group, FC Barcelona B, which plays in the second tier of the Spanish league. After participating in only one match for the first team, and then only on the bench, he moved to Deportivo Leon in tier three of the Spanish league. He spent the following seasons with third division sides Zamora, Novelda, Hercules (with whom he was promoted to the second division) and Badalona. In the summer of 2010 he retired from active play after having begun in his last year to work as a scout for former Barcelona and Bulgaria star Hristo Stoichkov's football academy in Barcelona. In the two years prior to his first term at Maccabi, Martinez worked with Oscar Garcia and assistant coach Kika Alvarez at Barcelona's youth club, analysing specific video material of goalkeepers, of the first team and of Barcelona's rivals.
