Omri Kende spent his career fighting for playing time as a right-back at Hapoel Tel Aviv, but these days he is better known for a different fight - the one against a gambling addiction that very nearly wrecked him as a teenager. In a new interview with ONE, he said the problem he lived through has never really gone away in Israeli football.
"There are plenty of well-known players who gamble," Kende told the site, adding that the list includes fathers of some of Israel's better-known current players. He was careful to frame the comment as a warning rather than an expose, saying his aim was "to highlight the problem and help" - not to name names.
Kende's own story is the reason anyone is asking him. He developed a serious gambling habit at 18 and 19, in his early years on Hapoel Tel Aviv's books, and ran up debts with grey-market lenders that spiralled beyond his control. The club suspended him in October 2008 once those debts came to light, and a club official personally lent him money to help cover what he owed.
The addiction cost him more than money. Kende admitted to ONE that he lied to a young Hapoel Tel Aviv teammate, Dani Bonder, about changes to training sessions in order to gain an edge in their rivalry for a starting spot. Asked whether he had done it more than once, he answered simply: "all the time." Looking back, he called it his biggest regret from that period - "Dani is my regret, he's a golden guy, but we were competing for the position."
None of it stopped him building a genuine career. Kende went on to win the Israeli championship with Hapoel Tel Aviv in 2009-10 and lifted three State Cups with the club, before later spells with Romania's Astra Giurgiu, Hapoel Haifa, Maccabi Netanya and Hapoel Jerusalem.
Since hanging up his boots, Kende has become something of a media fixture, discussing his rise, collapse and recovery on podcasts and television, according to public broadcaster Kan. He says he now works informally with players still fighting the battle he once did.
His message to them, as he laid it out to ONE, is that recovery starts with honesty rather than concealment - admitting the truth to yourself before anyone else, rather than trying to hide a habit that, in his experience, rarely stays hidden for long inside a football dressing room.
Gambling among Israeli footballers is not a new concern - cases involving current and former players surface most seasons - but Kende's willingness to put his own name and story behind the warning sets him apart from the usual anonymous hand-wringing about the issue.
