My first morning at Hapoel Ashkelon FC has been so productive – contracts offered to physios, scouts, and a goalkeeping coach, that I decided to go out to lunch. There’s a little place around the corner that serves falafel with a good glass of locally produced cabernet sauvignon to wash it down. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to go together, but when it comes to wine I’m more adventurous than snobby. It’s not the only difference between me and Suralex.
I restricted myself to a glass. I need to finish appointing the coaching team and that requires sobriety.
According to the database, our fitness coach is a carbon-copy of our (now former) goalkeeping coach: determined and disciplined but nothing to be determined or disciplined over. I’m bringing in a good physio team but they’re going to have their work cut out if this guy remains in charge of fitness training.
Which he won’t. I should have asked the club to install a revolving door.
Normally at the start of a save, the FM staff database is so devoid of talent that it feels as though you end up appointing people with the least negative attributes. But here comes Mr Ronen Weiss, who not only knows his fitness onions, so to speak, but is also pretty determined in his work.
My habit on first days in parallel universes (i.e., previous editions of FM) has been to offer only one-year contracts to staff, on the basis that I’ll discover better as my networks widens. But with Weiss, as with the contracts I offered this morning, I depart from that habit. I don’t think I’m likely to find better any time soon. And I like to give my backroom team time to gel.
Time for a cuppa. I brought some Yorkshire tea with me on the flight from Luton.
I’m on a lucky streak. How long can it last?
