Networking his way to position of power

The Israeli journalist Ouriel Daskal looks at the Chelsea manager and the social skills he has used to ingratiate himself with people in high places

IN MARCH 2005 the most talked about football manager in the world – Jose Mourinho – went to Israel as a guest of the “Peres Center for Peace” to promote the soccer schools sponsored by the institution.

After the former Chelsea manager faced the media and delivered the regular clichés on the importance of football for the peace process, he moved on to play an exhibition game alongside senior Israeli businessmen and former players coached by a certain Avram Grant – at the time Israel national coach.

Three years on and Grant is hoping everyone will stop talking about his “former player” Jose as he leads Chelsea to their first Champions League final in Moscow.

Grant was born and raised far away from Moscow and the glamorous world of international football to a father who suffered the horrors of the Holocaust and a mother who did not want him to pursue a career in football.

These difficulties did not stop him becoming a leading coach in Israel and one of the most intriguing characters in world football.

Avram (Avraham) Grant was born in 1955 in Petach Tikva, a grim industrial town on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. He was named after his father’s grandfather, who was murdered by the Germans in Poland during the second World War.

Grant has never really talked with the Israeli press about his father’s time under Nazi occupation but the anti-Semitism he has suffered as Chelsea’s manager made him speak of it for the first time.

“I remember when I was a child playing soccer outside my house and hearing how my father suffers from his nightmares about the Nazis during his afternoon sleep,” he revealed in an interview to the weekend edition of the Israeli tabloid Yedioth Ahronoth.

His emotional celebrations after Chelsea’s win against Liverpool in the Champions League semi-final were also due to the fact that it was played on the Holocaust memorial day.

“For me it’s a great pride to see my son, Israeli, a Jew, leads a European football team in such a historic game on the Holocaust memorial day,” said his ecstatic father, Meir.

Grant participated in “The March of Life” in Auschwitz the day after the semi-final and in a moving speech addressed the high-school students, Israeli army officers and Holocaust survivors who attended the ceremony.

“Yesterday I’ve managed to take my team to the Champions league final,” he said, “but I cannot be happy in a place which embodies all the evil in this world.”

Before his career outside Israel, Grant hardly mentioned the holocaust. The only personal aspect of his life exposed to all was his good relationship with his late mother, Eliza. She was never really supportive of her son’s quest to become a football manager.

“Eliza never wanted him to work in soccer and encouraged him to be a lawyer or a physician,” Meir said in an interview. “Once, he came back to the house with a new ball and Eliza was so upset she took it and cut it open with a knife.”

Though Eliza disapproved of her son’s career he did not really mind living with parents late into his 30s.

Grant had a lot of “catching up” to do after he left his parents’ house and he did just that. When he was 36 he went on a blind date with Tzofit, a 27-year-old theatre actress. Three weeks later he asked her to marry him. Two months later she was pregnant.

“We married first then we learned how to really love each other,” Tzofit said in an interview.

Marrying a famous football manager certainly helped Tzofit’s career. From being a small-time actress she turned into a TV presenter who made television history as the first person to drink urine on live television. As the presenter of Milkshake – a weird morning show – Tzofit also explored chocolate baths and spaghetti baths, and communicating with aliens.

She went on to host a prime-time TV show but although she is a very skilful interviewer her show never really picked up and she started focusing on being Grant’s wife.

Not long ago, Avram and Tzofit embraced the mystical aspect of Judaism – Kabbalah. They both are advised by Eitan Yardeni, Madonna’s first Kabbalah teacher, and during Chelsea’s games Tzofit is using Kabbalah methods to send positive energies to her husband’s players.

Kabbalah is partly credited with Grant’s success, say some believers, but most of the people will credit his learning ability, determination to reach the very top and legendary networking skills.

He started coaching in Hapoel Petach Tikva’s youth programme at age 17 after a car accident ended his playing career, and he made his name as an innovative coach.

He was the first Israeli coach to further his football education in Europe, spending a lot of his time in continental clubs, learning about training and tactics from world-class managers and bringing the information back to the patchy training ground in Israel. Sampdoria of Italy was a favourite destination of young Avram.

Grant was also the first in Israel to use video analysis of the opposition and he made his name as a specialist in motivating players with clips from films like Braveheart.

His players were certainly up for a fight on the field and his teams were known for being aggressive and sometimes violent. In 1995 Grant’s motivational skills arguably contributed to ending the career of Maccabi Haifa’s elegant Ukrainian midfielder Roman Petz. Meir Melika, a Drogba-style striker in Grant’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, broke Petz’s leg with a vicious tackle.

As Melika analysed the damage to Petz’s leg there was no hint of regret on his face. On the contrary, he seemed like a soldier content with his accomplished mission.

“I f****d him,” Melika shouted towards Grant, unaware that the television camera was documenting his infamous words, making him and his coach for many months the most hated figures in Israeli soccer.

But the bad press never stuck for too long on Grant, who always knew how to handle the Israeli reporters. His speciality was one-on-one talks with influential reporters and commentators.

“He was always ready to speak,” says one reporter. “I once talked to him on the phone from 12am to 3am.”

His social skills were never meant to be wasted on reporters alone. Grant became a great buddy for many of Israel’s football-club owners, using his relationships to get jobs, sometimes in controversial ways.

In the 1995/96 season Maccabi Tel Aviv were led to the double by Dror Kashtan, whose only fault was that he did not pamper his relationship with Maccabi’s owner, Loni Herzikowitz. Grant, on the other end, had a very warm relationship with his friend Loni. At the end of the double season, Loni did the unthinkable: He fired Kashtan and handed Grant his job. The Maccabi fans were furious and named the change “Grant’s Putsch”.

This pattern – using his social and networking skills to replace a successful and loved manager – would come up again in Grant’s career in Chelsea, and that’s a problem for many people.

“Grant will always be known as ‘Abramovich’s friend’ and not a good football coach,” says Watford’s former defender Alon Hazan. “But that’s the way he worked his entire career. He based his career on knowing how to sell his ideas and vision to the right people. He knows how to talk to you.”

Grant met Roman Abramovich at a dinner organised by a mutual friend, the agent Pini Zehavi, and started working his charms to build a strong friendship with the Siberian oligarch, which eventually earned him Mourinho’s job.

The question now is will Grant continue working as manager of Chelsea next season or will Abramovich go for a glitzy name? Don’t bet against Grant.

“Grant talks to Abramovich at least 10 times a day,” says a friend of the Israeli. “We once watched a DVD together late at night and suddenly he got a call from Abramovich and they talked for a long time. It was the middle of the night! Is there any other manager in the world with such a close relationship with his boss? I don’t think so.”

Ouriel Daskal is sports-business editor of the Israeli daily business journal Calcalist.