The youth department officially opens its season this Saturday as the Under-16 Maccabi “Eli Fuchs” Tel Aviv joins the Under-17 side who have already begun their new year. Prior to its opening, Youth Department Director Nir Levin spoke about the professional aspects along with the personal values and of course the Champions League Youth Tournament.
“The youth department welcomes the 2015/16 year that will bring a number of innovations and changes to the system. Firstly, the historical participation of Maccabi “Shachar” Tel Aviv in the Champions League Youth Tournament. The Under-19 club will be part of this relatively new and extremely important competition where they will play the same day as the first team and against the same teams. For us this will be something that will demand the highest level of organization and professionalism.
As well, the youth system as a whole has undergone some significant changes in its methodology beginning with the Under-15 Maccabi “Eldad” Tel Aviv side and younger groups where we are paying more attention to the quality and not on the quantity. The training sessions that we will do with the children will be much more professional with more experienced coaches who will also have more responsibilities. Again we are emphasizing the quality of the training that the youngsters will receive.
We have also brought in new cognitive training methods and skills training that will be led by Aviv Rian and Roni Cohen as I feel this will be an important step to help the players with the way they think on and off of the pitch.
Following the success of the Mikve Yisrael program we’ve decided to expand and double the amount of groups that are within this framework. The idea behind this project is to take certain players from the Under-17 and Under-16 sides and give them a wider scope of training and facilitate their studies according to a variety of methods.
The department will also continue to key an eye on the moral and educational development of the players. One of the things that we are most proud of in the department is the amount of players that we have been able to send to the various National Teams which is the most of any other club in the country. Also, seeing some of youth department graduates such as Dor Micha, Dor Peretz, Barak Levi, Mavis Tchibota, Olanrewaju Kehinde, Gael Margulies, Sean Goldberg and others who have gone on to play in the Premier League makes us very happy and proud. I hope and believe that this coming season will be as good or even better than last year.”
