Another season down, this is our 12th season as manager of FC Jerusalem. We have just won consecutive league titles, and made the Champions League group stages at our first attempt. This season we hope for something similar. Maybe third place in the CL group stage to carry on European football after the winter. We need to maintain our place at the top of the tree in Israel to continue earning that Champions League money and perpetuating the cycle!
For once we are actually expected to win something! Bookies make us favourites for the title. I guess after two years of winning they are finally confident we have a team that is capable of challenging. We also have the majority of the players in the Media Dream Team, and the odds for Top Scorer and Player of the Year are also stacked heavily in our favour. If we don’t win, or at least mount a serious challenge then something really has gone wrong.
On the transfer front, we continue with the recent structure of signing foreign players to go straight into the first team. Prince Tshuma was signed for 400K, a Zimbabwe international centre back who will be our star defender. Campo is a left winger and centre midfield who can help Flavio Henrique in the middle of the park and Cerutti on the left wing. I have also signed a couple of young Israelis who have the potential to feature in the team in a few years. Their development will be monitored closely. The plan will be to get them training with the first team and be eligible for the U19s. As well as young future Israeli stars I have bulked out the squad with some reasonably priced local players who will be able to fill in when required. As again, the early season we will prioritise the Champions League so will need some suitable understudies to the first team to come into the team in and around the CL games. Lior Sela and then Roi Nager becoming our record transfer, although we still haven’t spent £1million on a player yet. I imaging we probably will next season.
Amongst the outgoings we had a bit of drama. Early on it looked ominous as the vultures were circling over Johnny Polo. We had a few bids for him which I rejected but knew more would come. He is a great player after all. He had a £3.7M minimum release which wasn’t enough to deter any potential suitors. I tried to offer him a new contract to either remove, (highly unlikely) or increase the clause. In hindsight I probably should have just bit the bullet but the contract he wanted was huge, and the minimum fee could not be negotiated above £4.5M. Eventually the bid came in for the minimum fee and I could not prevent our star Colombian making the switch to China. We got over £3million profit in the bank though, so we weren’t left empty handed. We had to find a suitable replacement so manged to get another loan to cover.
The other transfer saga surrounded Doren Yosefi, I managed to fend off the advances of more Chinese admirers in the summer window. With the help of the board, who I persuaded to reject a couple of lower bids, we kept him until January. But again, megabucks Shenzhen came in for him with an improved offer. The board accepted and wouldn’t change their mind this time. He left for a record fee for an Israeli for a potential £12.5M. To be perfectly honest he wasn’t going to be in the team much longer. He was about as good as he was going to get, and with the improvements we were making his time would be up sooner rather than later. Therefore, getting this kind of money for him was a bonus.
These two transfers really boosted out coffers and bolstered our transfer kitty, meaning we would allow us to spend on upgrading the side. I have always seemed to have a more prosaic take on spending transfer budgets. I rarely spend the full budget on a single player, preferring to use it to improve several areas instead of blowing it on one single transfer. There have been a couple a players in the game who I have had my eye on for a season or two, but the transfers asked by the selling club, although I have the money to do it, has always been over the limit I want to spend on a single acquisition. A lot of the young Israeli players have had prohibitive transfer fees, so I have bided my time with them. Although that will probably mean their value rises and the required transfer fee increases with it and I might end up missing out. But I won’t be held to ransom. There haven’t been any truly exceptional Israeli players available yet, so I haven’t felt the need to break the bank on them. There are cheaper alternatives who are not that far from their ability who I have managed to snap up instead. As the club continues to grow the amount of funds available will hopefully grow and we will be able to invest more into the building of squads. Filling the side with the better Israeli players to complement the best foreign stars we can afford.
I have started to sign a few foreign players on permanent contracts Polo, Tshuma, Cerutti and Murtzic are all now contracted players. They were all signed for reasonably small fees, and hopefully like Polo we can keep for a while and sell for bigger profits down the line. A few contract negotiations have come with the requirement to use the club as a stepping stone, and to insert minimum release fee clauses. This will be monitored and will try and get the best deals for the club.
As for the Youth Intake, the less said about that the better, another meek showing from the Head of Youth Development. Still no improvement in the Youth Recruitment, although the Training Facilities, Junior Coaching, and Youth Facilities have been improved this season. Maybe we will see some improvement down the line.
We managed to make it to the Champions’ League group stage. A fairy easy three qualifying rounds culminating in a defeat of Club Brugge over the two legs saw us in the draw. Again seeded fourth we would always be u against it. This time we were drawn against Real Madrid (again), Arsenal and Benfica. We acquitted ourselves admirably, with a home win against Benfica and a draw in the away tie. 4 defeats to Real and Arsenal were to be expected.
For finishing in third place we made it to the Europa League, and were drawn against Norwich, who have turned out to be a good Premier League side. An away goals victory saw us into the Second Knockout Round. A comfortable two legged win over Real Sociedad saw us drawn against Bayer Leverkusen in the Quarter Final. The German outfit proved a hurdle too far, a poor home second leg saw us knocked out 5-4 on aggregate. In our third season in Europe we had managed to progress to a Quarter Final in Europe’s second competition. I think a very good showing.
As for our league form, we started the season unbeaten in the first 16 matches. And with one from the previous season a mammoth 17 game streak without losing put us in a great position. We suffered a loss of form in March, losing 3 games in a row. This coincided with our return to European competition and a vastly rotated squad. We reached the season split a point clear at the top. 7 wins and three loses after the split saw us claim our third Premier League title by 10 points in the end.
We didn’t quite amass the same points haul as last season, but the second highest in-game total so far. A bit more rotation this season meant we ended up losing a few more games than we would like. We still have the goal of having an unbeaten season to go for. A stronger squad will be required for that, and maybe a few less rotations around Champions League group games and knockout will be required for that! We do have the longest unbated record in the league so far with 17 so that can be the start.
We also managed to lose the final of the Gvia HaMedina for the domestic double. But all in all a solid season in Israel saw us once again qualify for the Champions League. Our exploits in Europe the previous seasons had seen us enter the qualifying and the next stage. So we only had 2 qualifying rounds this time.
Our team of the year contained four foreign stars, and five loanees. We are still heavily reliant on a combination of both. Only Badir would make the Israeli Premier League Team of the Year, whilst Flavio Henrique would win Foreigner of the Year and place second in the Player of the Year.
Another season of progress behind us. Next season we look to try to improve on this, hopefully we can get an extra win or two in the Champions League and make the knockout stages. As it is we have two years of Champions League money behind us, which is giving us a massive advantage over the other sides in Israel. I will continue to look to cherry pick the better players in the league to enhance our domestic chances, and look to sig the best foreign players we can. As we improve our existing players are getting more recognition and trying to keep them might take a bit more effort. Individuals like Cerutti and Tshuma could well be poached by some of the bigger clubs, the Chinese seem to be very keen on our best players. We need to try and either refuse their approaches, or more likely get as much in transfer fees as we can. As long as we can continue to find suitable replacements we should be able to carry on with our existing model.
FM RioSantos 