The Maccabi Tel Aviv players received a message from the team’s manager, Yoav Ziv, about filming for a championship clip to be held at Bloomfield Stadium, and arrived yesterday at noon at their home field thinking that this would indeed be the case. Some of them saw members of the media outside, and upon entering the locker room wondered if it was an open event. But then he entered To the dressing room the captain, Sharan Yeni, who informed them that he was retiring from football.
This was the first time the champion players heard about Yeni’s intention, and a few minutes later, the former Israel national team player went to the media room and announced his decision at the press conference. “We knew that Sharan was injured and that he had conversations with Mitch Goldhar, but we received it as a complete surprise,” said players in the team. “That’s exactly Sharan Yeni, everything is different with him, even in retirement.”
And it was indeed a different press conference. At the age of 37 and with six championships under his belt, Yeni took the stage smiling. Unlike many similar events, there were no tears. “In football, everything is big. The feelings, the emotions, everything is amplified. When you fail, when you win, when you take titles – everything is huge. Sometimes I felt like a kindergarten teacher, sometimes like a gladiator, but I always knew that I was playing for a club much bigger than me,” explained Yeni.
Sharan Yeni joined the senior team of Maccabi Tel Aviv in 2004. Those were less good times for the yellow Hafar team, which did win the championship in the summer of 2003 – but lifted the plate the next time only ten years later. Yeni also knew the failures and the periods The more raucous ones in Kiryat Shalom, and he was a significant part of the “reawakening of Maccabi Tel Aviv”, as he himself defined it at the press conference.
In the summer of 2012, even before the plate returned to Kiryat Shalom, Oscar Garcia asked the Maccabi players during the training camp to choose the captain. Sharan Yeni was chosen almost unanimously. The player himself was surprised, but the Spanish coach told him then: “Now you have a responsibility, I trust you.” At the end of that season, Yeni and Maccabi won the first championship in the Goldhar era.
“The best captain in history”
Goldhar himself was not in Bloomfield yesterday, he has already returned to his business in Canada, but it was important for him to say goodbye to the one who was captain during most of his time as owner. “Sharan Yeni, 555 games with the Maccabi shirt, the only player who was here when I first arrived about 15 years ago,” Goldhar wrote in his farewell message. “Sharan embodies all that is good, represents the club well as a captain through a high work ethic, character and modesty. Sharan always respected everyone, from the coach to the farm workers. All these made him the ideal captain of Maccabi. Thank you, Sharan, for a magnificent career.”
With the exception of Goldhar, everyone was waiting in the press conference room: CEO Ben Mansford, the coaching staff led by Robbie Keane and all the players. “I think you are the best captain in history,” flattered Eran Zahavi, the man who received the captain’s armband when Shaini left for Witsa in the Netherlands. When he returned, the armband was waiting for him Vazhavi continued his career abroad. Now, when Zahavi’s future at Maccabi is still unknown, Yeni tried to convince Dor Peretz to wear the ribbon, but according to him “he refused”.
Players at Maccabi talked about the “enormous respect” they have for Leini.
The senior members of the staff, and certainly the youngest among them, would consult him and sometimes also “grab” the veteran Maini, who set a high bar for them in training even if they were not playing. Befitting an unusual press conference, at the moment when Yeni spoke about the future generation – his little son, Barak, fell asleep in a chair, and his father took it with humor, like almost every question he was asked.
Speaking of the future, in the meetings between Goldhar and Yeni it was suggested that he stay at the club in a professional capacity, but unlike other footballers – with Yeni, things work differently. He talked about “additional proposals in the business sector”, and asked for time to think about everything before making a decision.
In the end, the decision to retire was a kind of compulsion due to the injury. Ben Mansford made it clear to Lainey that in view of the fact that he was injured at the club, Maccabi Tel Aviv will provide him with all the necessary conditions until he recovers, even though he is retiring and the contract ends. This leaves a situation in which Yaney will also start the next season at Maccabi Tel Aviv, but this will happen mainly to work On the knee that “runs to the side”.
When it was all over, the players went down to the Bloomfield lawn to pose for the thing they thought they had come for, the championship clip. After everything got mixed up, they joked that “even after retirement, Sharan Yeni will start the 2024/25 season in Kiryat Shalom.” Although to recover from the injury, but as in many moments in his career, and certainly on the day of retirement itself – with Sharan Yeni you never know.
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