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Posted by
Steve Bottjer,
December 27, 2012 |
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Email Steve Bottjer
Twitter @BottjerRNO |
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With the news over the holiday season that Canadian goalkeeper Tomer Chencinski has transferred from Swedish outfit Orebro SK to storied Israeli side Maccabi Tel Aviv, the 28 year old keeper looks to be continuing a rapid rise in professional football that really began back in 2011 with Finnish side VPS.
See also: Hard work paying off for Chencinski
The 6 foot 3 shot stopper is now set to play his club football in the Israeli Premier League with the most titled club in Israeli football, and the most successful Israeli football club outside the country, having won the AFC Champions League twice. Maccabi was the second Israeli club to reach the coveted group stage of the UEFA Champions League and is the only team in Israel to never been relegated from the Israeli Premier League.
Maccabi Sports Director Jordi Cruyff told the clubs' official website: "After two months of negotiations we are happy to sign Tomer Chencinski at Maccabi Tel Aviv as we currently have two senior goalkeepers in Vincent Enyeama and Barak Levy. As everyone knows that Vincent will be absent for around a month due to the African Cup of Nations we needed another senior goalkeeper at Maccabi. Tomer will fight together with his colleagues for his place".
While Chencinski had impressed greatly in his first season playing professionally in Sweden in 2012 and had recently established himself as Orebro’s number one keeper, it appears the Swedish side’s relegation to the second division in conjunction with the opportunity to play with a top side that regular competes in the UEFA Champions League and Europa League competitions made a move to Israel an offer that the keeper could not refuse.
RedNation spoke with Chencinski earlier in December and the Canadian keeper was enthusiastic in expressing his desire to play in Europe’s two premier club competitions.
“If there are good teams that are interested and potential teams that are playing in Europe, that is a footballer’s dream. Everybody wants to play in Europe – in the Champions League and the Europa League – and I’m no different. So I will do anything that I can in order to be able to do that and just keep pushing to be the best that I can be,” said Chencinski.
The hardworking and driven keeper now joins Maccabi in a keeper situation that has been a familiar one for him over the last couple of years, with an incumbent number one keeper ahead of him in the pecking order and a real battle on his hands in terms of earning playing time. Given that he was in a similar situation at Orebro and left that club while positioned as the team’s number one keeper, Chencinski looks to the ideal keeper to both push Vincent Enyeama and to provide cover for the veteran Nigerian keeper when he is away at the African Cup of Nations.
Enyeama is widely considered to be one of the top keepers in the world and has been capped 70 times by Nigeria, with whom he has represented in both the World Cup and the African Cup of Nations.
Chencinski has established himself as a keeper on the rise of the last several years and will now seek to establish himself with the top club in Israel while at the same time battling for minutes with a truly world class keeper.
In addition to his stated desire to play in the Champions League and Europa League, Chencinski has also admitted that another one of his main goals is to compete at the national team level as well. With that in mind, his move to Maccabi sets up an interesting storyline with respect to which country he could suit up for at the International level. Chencinski was born Tel Aviv, Israel and grew up in Thornhill, Ontario and is thus eligible to play for both Canada and Israel.
While to date the keeper has not been called up by either nation, it will interesting to see if a move to the country of his birth brings him closer to the sphere of the Israel Football Association.
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