The pyramid of failures and the chain of mistakes of Maccabi Haifa
True, it's only the Toto Cup and there's no reason for it to panic yet, but Maccabi Haifa's poor start is the result of a chain of managerial mistakes that drag on from season to season. They shape a culture of suspicion, criticism, blame-seeking, and shifting responsibility, lacking the patience necessary for systems looking for a new direction.
In general, let's calm down for a moment, take a deep breath - nothing has happened yet. Not in the 2026/27 season, at least. Although Maccabi Haifa did manage to fall behind 3:0 twice in less than a week against two teams that finished last season in the bottom playoff, and the upcoming season doesn't promise them much beyond that - and this, let's say, does not bode well - but the context is important. July has not yet turned into August, and this is only the Toto Cup. It is a competition designed for winning, but no less so - for failing. It is a time to mess up, to try, to err, to feel all the limbs and discover that where they thought there was a leg, there is actually a hand, and all without paying too heavy a price.
But sane thinking, this sober view, is not possible for everyone. It is logical enough even for big, stressed, and high-profile teams like Maccabi Tel Aviv and Beitar Jerusalem, but it is too logical for Maccabi Haifa, a club that as a way of life exists beyond the borders of madness, moving up and down with the sensitivity of a Japanese seismograph. Every victory is an insurance policy for success, every loss is a prelude to an inevitable failure. A star without oxygen.
What shaped this crazy volatility? The toxic media climate around the team does not help, of course. The local media lifts Maccabi Haifa up so there is somewhere to drop it from, and brings it down so it is closer to the feet that seek to trample it. All this is true, but also unimportant. The real reason why Maccabi Haifa is a club where every drop is a storm and every headache is the beginning of a terminal illness is because this is not really a new season. July gives teams the opportunity to do a restart, but Maccabi Haifa cannot do a restart. Its bugs have penetrated too deep. 13 teams in the Premier League start from zero, but only Maccabi Haifa is in a rolling deficit.
The suspicion and criticism of the fans towards Yaakov Shahar have long crossed the point of no return. The disgust regarding the professional staff led by Itzik Ovadia and Lior Refaelov did not stop just because last season went into the books. And we haven't even mentioned Barak Bakhar, whose last two seasons are eroding the seemingly infinite credit he accumulated as the one who led the team to its only three championships in the last 15 years. The composure and patience that can be mustered in terribly stressed clubs simply do not exist in the atmosphere of Maccabi Haifa. It is a star without oxygen.
Every summer, Maccabi Haifa stands in front of the mirror and puts on makeup. Sometimes it's Matias Nahuel and Xander Severina, sometimes Tribante Stewart and Djordje Jovanovic, and this time maybe Bruninho and Tsunami. Every time it smears a thick layer of new players on itself, it lies to itself that something has changed, that the way to beautify its managerial-professional-interpersonal ugliness is through a series of valuable preparations. But this makeup always comes off. Sometimes in the fourth round of the league, sometimes in the second round of the Toto Cup, and then it returns to a place worse than the starting point because along the way it collects another experience of failure that increases frustration.
This does not mean that Maccabi Haifa is beyond repair. It can be fixed. At least in the view of a single season. In fact, out of the terrible chaos in which it has been for 15 years, the last great dynasty of Israeli football grew. The speed with which it turned from a three-time consecutive champion into a mess in cleats teaches about the randomness with which the successful version was formed. Is it possible that in some summer enough good players in green shirts will come together to create a team that will compete for the championship and even win it? Absolutely. Maccabi Haifa spends money, and quite a lot. The point is that the deep managerial mistakes of recent years have created a squad that for the third season in a row needs to replace about 50 percent of it.
The pyramid of sins and failures of Maccabi Haifa becomes higher and higher with every passing year, and along the way it collects not only players with heavy contracts that need to be gotten rid of, but also shapes a culture of suspicion, criticism, blame-seeking, and shifting responsibility. Success on the grass solves (almost) every dispute off it, but to succeed, conditions are required that cannot exist in the current Maccabi Haifa. Patience, which is necessary for systems looking for a new direction, cannot be found there. For patience, respect and mutual trust are required. These have been lost to it.
The Maccabi Haifa of summer 2026 is close in budget to Maccabi Tel Aviv, but a club that will be so far from the top of Israeli football can be created even with a quarter of the money. As it looks right now, this season too, Maccabi Haifa will serve as the comedian of Israeli football, an entity whose main role is to slip on a banana peel. Once it used to make others cry. Today it makes them laugh. At its expense.
