The Maccabi Tel Aviv “Avi Cohen” Youth Academy has a wide range of departments whose goal is to promote and streamline the development of young players. Just before the Academy teams open up training, the staff is already preparing for the upcoming season. Let’s meet the medical and sport science departments whose responsibilities include the continuous evolvement as per the philosophy of Performance Director Patrick van Leeuwen.
Medical Department
The Youth Academy Medical Department staff aims to give optimal attention to each and every player that requires it, from health, rehabilitation, anthropometric monitoring and medical-sport education whether they are in the South or North Branches or if they are players on the Under-19 or Under-10 or any other team at Maccabi.
As far as the staff is concerned there is no difference between players and they will do their utmost to get them back on the pitch if injured. The Club has given the coaches and players a mandate that training sessions must be as close as possible to match conditions as the role of the department is to make sure that injured or ill players return to action as strong and as healthy as possible in order to minimize the risk of future injuries.
Youth Academy Medical Staff:
Snir Konik – Director of the Medical Department
Ben Mor – Physiotherapist at Kiryat Shalom
Tomer Tabib-Rabinowitz – Physiotherapist at the University and Hadar Yosef.
Ze’ev Miller – Sports therapist and medic in Kiryat Shalom.
Nir Neuman – Medic at the University and Hadar Yosef.
Sport Science Department
The Sport Science Department features five fitness trainers and four analysts, who are in essence the operational arm of the department. The staff analyzes everything that happens on the pitch by using a variety of technologies such as GPS and video. They also gather information that is put into a database in order to keep track of the content that has been used in each training session. The ultimate goal is to give the coaches guidelines so they can properly plan training sessions, to analyze what they are doing via the bigger picture, when to do certain sessions during the week and on which day, all the way to analyzing methodology, sets, rest times and conditions.
In addition, there is a staff that helps manage video analysis. The staff films both matches and training sessions in order to build individual or team video clips according to the philosophy of Performance Director Patrick van Leeuwen. The goal is to provide the coaches with material and video information for group or individual meetings. The video is also used to test match play according to the predefined specifications which can analyze both quantitatively and qualitatively what occurred during the game itself. This will allow the ability to give both positive and negative feedback in order to make corrections where needed.
Youth Academy Sport Science Department:
Antonio Dello Iacono – Director of the Sport Science Department
Gal Vaknin – Fitness Trainer
Ilan Richardson – Fitness Trainer
Zlil Shushan – Fitness Trainer
Yair Illouz – Fitness Trainer
Asaf Chava – Fitness Trainer
Liran Gindi – Analyst
Shlomi Tubul – Analyst
Nir Sharkuka – Analyst
Dor Hassid – Analyst
