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European national teams recruit Israel's 'commando coaches' By Ofer Matan Among the profusion of Israeli basketball coaches who have recently been given coaching positions with European national teams, the latest and most surprising case is that of Gadi Keidar. Since the 2002-2003 season, when he replaced Erez Edelstein mid-season at Hapoel Jerusalem, Keidar has not coached a single Israeli team, and his experience was limited to managing Hapoel Jerusalem's youth squad. During the 2005-2006 season, he made a particularly short sortie to Austria, where he coached Oberwart for a handful of games, but for most of the decade he was forced to be satisfied coaching children and teens. Advertisement For his part, Keidar received a warm recommendation from Arik Shivek, the coach of Demon Amsterdam, and has benefited from his warm relations with the team's general manager, Pete Meyer. These two men were not, however, the decisive components in the decision to selection Keidar as coach. Essentially, the Dutch preferred not to appoint a local as coach due to political considerations, and Keidar benefited from the vacuum. "Gadi doesn't have connections or obligations to any of the clubs in Holland," according to Hais Langwart, one of the heads of the Netherlands Basketball Federation, who met with Keidar last month in Amsterdam. "He is free of politics, unlike all of the local coaches. Basically, we knew that if we took a coach from a certain team, the other coaches would complain and it would be a mess," he said. Nonetheless, Keidar is inheriting a mediocre team from Europe's B-class, and the task before him is to upgrade it to class "A." A miraculous rise to the 2009 European championship would be considered a bonus. Two Dutchmen currently play in the NBA - Francisco Olson with the Seattle Supersonics, and Dan Gadzuric with the Milwaukee Bucks, but only Olson will play in the first national team game under Keidar. In addition to the adult team, Keidar has been appointed coach of all of Holland's national teams, and are expecting him to improve the quality of play at all levels. According to Langwart, Keidar was entrusted with this task on the basis of his strong record in Jerusalem. The Dutch may be surprised to learn, however, that Hapoel's youth team, which they consider a model for imitation, has produced only a miniscule number of professional players - Erez Katz, Amit Tamir and Yuval Naimi - in comparison to Maccabi Tel Aviv, and even smaller clubs like Rishon Letzion, Ramat Gan, Herzliya and Galil Elyon. Connections and qualifications In addition to his work with Hapoel Jerusalem, Keidar seems to have benefited from bearing the blue passport of the State of Israel. He is one of four Israelis who currently coach a European national team, along with Muli Katzurin in Poland, Pini Gershon in Bulgaria, and of course David Blatt, who brought the European trophy to Russia. It is a new phenomenon, a sort of second-generation of Israeli coaches who have left in recent years for European clubs (see map). It is one which could lead to the interesting script of a meeting between Katzurin, Blatt, Zvika Sherf (of Israel's national team), and maybe even Keidar and Gershon, though the appearance of Bulgaria and Holland in the final would come as a surprise to many. Of the four, Blatt is the pioneer of the current wave of emigration, following the path of Germany coach Ralph Klein in the 1980s, and Holland coach Bob Gonen in the 1990s.The man behind David Blatt's arrival in Russia was Sergei Trakanov, a sports agent, the team's general manager, and a former player with CSKA Moscow. "I followed the work of David Blatt for five years," he said, "particularly during the season that he coached St. Petersburg. I discovered his principle strength lies in his ability to form friendships with the players off the court, and on the other hand to be tough with them on the parquet." Trakanov's gamble paid off when Blatt brought the European cup to Moscow, but Blatt's initial selection as coach provoked heated debate within Russia, not least because he is a foreigner. Now, he is one of the country's most valued basketball figures, and a consistent candidate to head its best teams. If Blatt's advantage was his coaching style and Keidar's his connections, it seems that Muli Katzurin integrated both of these elements in landing his job. "Muli advanced Wroclaw offensively during his time there," said Christoph Srogos, a sportswriter at the Polska Times. "Federation chairman Roman Ludvichuk was trying to create an exciting team for the European championship, and he chose Katzurin. In his time in Poland, Katzurin connected well with Yanush Dilbobski, the league president and a powerful player in Polish basketball, which I believe also helped [Katzurin] get the position," he said. Katzurin thus found himself having lunch with Ludvichuk a month a half ago in the tiny Czech town of Jambruk. Although the chairman was determined to have a contract signed for four years, the Israeli coach signed only until the European championship. "After that, we'll see," he said. In the case of Pini Gershon, connections talked. With Gershon, every move is tinged in some way by personal charisma and magic, and also possibly by ulterior motives. What is beyond doubt, however, is that Gershon's grandfather was born in Bulgaria, a fact that he said attracted him to the country. The somewhat strange coupling was made by referee Shai Shtriks, who lives in Bulgaria and is married to a Bulgarian. In Gershon's case, the answer may be self-evident, but the question must still be raised: What is it in Israeli coaches that makes them succeed in Europe and be given the reins of its national teams? Ralph Klein, the first to make the leap, says, "Israeli coaches rise above most of the European coaches on the tactical level of managing the game. We all saw the Real Madrid coach make every possible mistake in the game against Maccabi in Madrid, and throw away an entire season." "A coach's correct decisions are what win games," he said. Katzurin, for his part, thinks the Israelis' strength lies in their creativity. "Because in Israel there are traditionally not enough tall players," he explained, "coaches are forced to come up with creative solutions to compensate, and this leads them to be more versatile coaches." Keidar has even come up with a name for the phenomenon Katzurin describes. "The Dutch, for example, see us as 'commando coaches.' We are both tough and knowledgeable about compensating for shortcomings like height and athleticism," he said. Trakanov, the Russian GM and agent, discerns a gap between the level of Israel's coaches and the state of basketball in the country as a whole:"I see seriousness and professionalism in Blatt, Gershon and many other Israeli coaches. It's pretty strange, when you think about it, that a country with rather mediocre basketball and an uncompetitive league produces such good coaches." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Fear of extinction The state of over 20 species of birds in Israel has worsened considerably. Taking advantage Jerusalem police probe possible gang rape of disabled woman.

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