By Eurohoops team / info@eurohoops.net
Joining Coviran Granada after playing for Maccabi Tel Aviv for two years from 2021 to 2023, Yiftach Ziv left the ACB before 2024 to eventually move to LNB with Saint-Quentin.
Talking with Hebrew media YNet News, he said that something changed before and after October 7. “I came to Granada to be a leading player, and at the beginning of the season, it was really like that. I had good games. We weren’t the best in the Spanish league, but we competed well against top teams”, he commented referring to performances against UCAM Murcia and Basquet Girona, for example.
“I was very happy at first, but from October 7, I went through a very unpleasant period, both professionally and personally”, he added. “Not to the extent that I experienced something, but you’re afraid to speak Hebrew on the street. You keep looking right and left. The biggest problem was that the team simply did not support me; they abandoned me”, the 28-year-old point guard answered when asked if he felt antisemitism in Coviran Granada.
Yiftach Ziv addresses the attitude of long-time Granada’s head coach Pablo Pin. “Does it make sense that two days later [after October 7] he doesn’t ask how I am and doesn’t talk to me at all? There is no doubt that it’s because I’m Israeli and Jewish. They simply ostracized me. It left a scar on me because it was the first time I went to Europe, and I was looking forward to it”, the playmaker added.
Coviran Granada’s statement to address the situation
Releasing an official statement to Granada’s local media Ideal, also shared in English by Basket News, the Spanish club defended themselves. “The player, on a purely sporting level, was declining in playing numbers and importance within the team before October 7, as can be demonstrated and recorded in his statistics accumulated during the games played before the conflict broke out”, they said.
“When Yiftach Ziv talks about how we were not interested at any time in his personal life, it is totally inaccurate. This is demonstrated in several [head coach] Pablo Pin’s press conferences, in interviews with Óscar Fernández-Arenas, and on the countless occasions in which he was asked directly about his personal and family situation”, Granada’s press release added.
They also talked about being worried about Yiftach Ziv’s brother, who joined the Israeli army. “At all times, the club showed interest in his situation. In fact, on the team’s trip to Bilbao, we already knew that his father and brother had been called to participate in the conflict, and that same morning we learned that part of his family was traveling to Gaza”, the club stated.
The Spanish team claimed its innocence on the matter by referring to the case of an Israeli football player. “The nationality of the player has never been a problem for us, as can be seen with the invitation received by the former Granada CF player, Shon Weissman, who was in the authorities’ box at the Palacio de Deportes watching a Coviran Granada match after with the conflict had already started”, the club’s statement also commented.
“From the moment we became aware of the player’s statements to the Hebrew media, we recognized that they were totally untrue and that we would not make any reaction to them since it is not our way of acting with players who have been part of the club. Despite this, we have had no choice but to briefly and truthfully explain some of the comments that appear in said statement”, which they finally shared.
PHOTO CREDIT: ACB