Reuven Atar knows Maccabi Haifa's dressing room better than most, and his verdict on the club's newly split command structure comes with a condition attached: it only works if Lior Rafaelov is prepared to leave the office and get his tracksuit dirty.
Speaking to the sports outlet ONE, the former Haifa midfielder said he expects Rafaelov, the club's incoming sporting director, to be hands-on with Barak Bachar's staff wherever he can help — including out on the training pitch — rather than treating the job as a purely administrative one.
The comment lands weeks after Haifa finally settled its management structure for 2026-27. Bachar, back for a third spell in the dugout, keeps his job as head coach, while Rafaelov — one of the most decorated attacking players in the club's recent history — moves into the newly created sporting director role, overseeing recruitment and the wider football operation.
Bachar's return itself came in October 2025, when he replaced Diego Flores in his third stint in charge of the club, having previously left the job before returning less than half a year later.
Atar has been tracking the Bachar-Rafaelov relationship since that reappointment. Back in October, he said Bachar's success would hinge on how well the pair worked together, urging both men to settle disagreements directly rather than trade messages through the press — a pointed reference to friction that had occasionally spilled into public view during Bachar's earlier spells at the club.
His latest comments push that argument further: it is not enough, in Atar's view, for Rafaelov to sign off on transfers and squad planning from a distance. A sporting director who built his reputation as a player through graft on the pitch, Atar argues, needs to bring that same visibility to preseason work if the new structure is to earn the dressing room's trust.
For Haifa, the stakes are straightforward. After a campaign that fell well short of expectations, the club has opted for a shared leadership model instead of concentrating power in one figure — and pundits like Atar are already framing the coming season as a joint test of whether Bachar and Rafaelov can make that division of labour work in practice, not just on an organisational chart.
