A rare "transfer" out of the US lower divisions. SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Sacramento Republic FC announced today they have reached an agreement with Maccabi Haifa FC of the Israeli Premier League for the transfer of Josh Cohen. The player will link up with Maccabi Haifa FC ahead of the first leg of their UEFA Europa League Second Round Qualifier next week against Ligue 1 side RC Strasbourg Alsace and ahead of their 2019-20 season. Josh Cohen Position: Goalkeeper (#1) Height: 6-1 Weight: 174 lb Born: August 18, 1992 Birthplace: Mountain View, California Hometown: Sunnyvale, California Previous Club: Phoenix Rising FC College: UC San Diego https://www.sacrepublicfc.com/josh-cohen
At the Second qualifying round of the Europa League, American GK Josh Cohen dressed but didn't play serving as the backup goalie in the Maccabi Haifa F.C. 2-1 home win against RC Strasbourg. Despite the win, Cohen's team was eliminated from the competition. pic.twitter.com/uLGpDEZL4x— United States Soccer Center (@states_center) August 1, 2019
According to Transfermarkt, he made 2 league appearances back in Sept. He came in just before the half to replace the injured starter and then went 90 in a 3-0 win the next game. He returned to the bench after that. @TheFalseNine -- Please promote this fine young man to YA. Thx.
Congratulations to Josh! I coached Josh in junior high school, but can take zero credit for his success. His mom had mentioned a couple of months ago that he had his opportunity. He had trained with the SJ Quakes in the past.
Back in September, @JCohenHere had this nice save for Maccabi Haifa in the Israeli Premier League. Cohen played for Sacramento Republic (USL) before moving to Maccabi Haifa in the summer. pic.twitter.com/IvcmTBIvHi— Everybody Soccer (@letsallsoccer) October 16, 2019
Made his third appearance (second start) in a 3-0 away win against Hapoel Kfar Saba on 10/26. He still hasn't conceded a goal. Cohen seems to have a decent shot at unseating Guy Haimov from the starting role before the season is over. Before the season, the Jerusalem Post's league preview said of Haimov: "There have been recent doubts about the Greens’ shot-stopper, but the job is really his to lose after the club sent Omri Glazer to Ness Ziona and brought in untested American Josh Cohen to be his backup."
Press reported as of late that the players have more confidence in Cohen. They find his presence in the back very calming. So it looks like the starting role is now his to lose.
Maccabi Haifa 3-3 FC Ashdod One.co.il gave Cohen a rating of 5/10. Pretty average for the whole team. He certainly is not at fault for the goals. As you can see from the highlights, defending is optional in Israel. The closest Israeli football gets to Europe is by playing The Final Countdown after a goal.
BTW, that was his fifth consecutive start. After that game, Cohen has now played the majority of Maccabi Haifa's league minutes in goal. If he plays 90 in the next game, he'll have played the majority of minutes in all competitions. Definitely safe to say he's the starter now.
It is actually good that the focus in terms of goalkeepers has not really been on him. Maccabi Tel Aviv signed a Jewish kid from Flamengo's youth team, Daniel Tenenbaum, and he recently took over the starting role. Since then, he has gone 1,170 minutes without conceding a goal. So the media focus and pressure has really been on him. Which is good for Josh. Let's him settle in without all the distractions that the media has over there on the chemistry within team's locker rooms.
For those who missed it, the game of the season in Israel was yesterday as @MaccabiTLVFC continued its reign as league leaders with a wild 4-3 victory at @mhfootballclub. American Josh Cohen started at GK for Haifa while Aaron Schoenfeld was on the bench for Tel Aviv.— Daniel Karell 🎗️ (@DanielKarell) January 7, 2020 Here’s the highlights from the match, including two incredible goals, one from Haifa’s Yannick Wildschut and the other from Haifa’s Muhammad Awad.https://t.co/6vrPDiKMai#IsraeliSoccer #LigatHaal— Daniel Karell 🎗️ (@DanielKarell) January 7, 2020
13 starts so far this season, including the last 10 league matches, with 7 clean sheets to his name. Maccabi Haifa are currently 2nd, 6 points behind Maccabi Tel Aviv. Hell of a lot closer than last season, when Haifa finished 31 points back in 2nd. A second-place finish would send Maccabi Haifa to the Europa League 1st Qualifying Round. A title would mean a ticket to the Champions League 2nd Qualifying Round.
Cohen reminds me a little of Steve Clark. Super athletic, willing to throw his body anywhere, cat-like reflexes, and a little fiery. He's a little less prone to mistakes than Clark but not quite as confident with his distribution. If you saw Cohen play for Sac Republic, he was a MLS-caliber GK. The best in the USL Championship. If he keeps up this pace with Maccabi Haifa, he might be worth a look-and-see from Berhalter.
Maccabi Haifa 0-1 Hapoel Kfar Saba Was waiting for the official highlight video to get uploaded to YouTube but nothing yet. Haifa dominated and Josh went 90 minutes between the pipes but then lost in stoppage time on a counter attack.
פרויקט תגלית: כך הפך ג'וש כהן לשוער הבכיר במכבי חיפה Very nice article in Hebrew about Josh Cohen being a real find for Maccabi Haifa. In Israel, they're very impressed that he does not go out at night to the parties and prefers to spend his days off exploring Israel's many hiking trails.
Interview: https://everybodysoccer.com/even-th...osh-cohen-interview-from-usl-to-europa-league Yeah, I was never the biggest kid growing up. I never played state ODP, let alone regional or national. A part of that was because basically there was me at 5’3” and two kids, same birth year, at 5’10”, 5’11”. And similar things for college, I definitely had a D1 coach tell me, “Look, we think you’re talented but we like our goalkeepers to be above 6’0”. We don’t know if you’ll grow a little bit but we don’t know if you’ll be there.” I wasn’t recruited at all going into college. I ended up choosing my school because of academic reasons. I ended up getting into [UC San Diego] and did a winter tryout and had gotten invited into preseason with the university team. But I wasn’t actively recruited or had much contact with the coaches before I applied to the school.
I've said it before but Cohen was best GK outside of MLS. For three seasons, he was easily the best of the USL. I was suprised a move to MLS never materialized. I would love to see Berhalter give Cohen a buzz. He plays with that chip on his shoulder and it's carried him to heights unchartered for a once overlooked California kid
It's slowly changing but there has long been a distrust from MLS teams in USL goalkeepers and I've struggled to pin down exactly why. I think there are a few reasons why, but not sure which ones are the leading factors... - MLS gk coaches don't stick around long and thus their understanding of the pyramid is pretty thin. Instead of really surveying the scene, they rely on either their own scouting or others' word of mouth, both of which are very limited. Lots of goalkeepers go overlooked because of this. - MLS gk coaches are rarely willing to put their neck on the line, especially considering when they're not around long as is. If they bring in a USL gk, it's because they went out of their way to do so. If they bring in an MLS backup, it's significantly safer for their job due to the resume the player brings in. - Teams regularly over-romanticize Europe/South America's leftovers. To no one's surprise, bringing in gks on a $0 transfer fee has not made many dividends. Cincinnati is the latest example of this. - USL teams don't want to give up their players for free. As said in the interview, Sacramento weren't thrilled about losing Cohen mid-season. Despite it looking good for Sacramento to be able to boost players' careers, they aren't receiving any $$ on the transfer. But do they block a player's career or let them walk for free? - USL players have a hard time of outrunning being a lower league player. It's a bit cyclical as they don't get chances to break in and since they can't break in then they're stuck under the glass ceiling. - The Athletic points out how it can actually be a pay cut to go from USL to MLS, "A key starting player on a top independent USL club today can make up to $80,000 plus housing costs. The MLS reserve minimum salary in 2019: $56,250." Annoying, the top comment on the article is, "It's the same reason MLS clubs aren't valuing the college draft: the quality isn't there." Kinda showing his hand if he's equating college to USL. Would love to see Cohen called into the national team but he'll need to return to MLS or go to a higher team in Europe to get that respect.
I don't think that is true. If Haifa were to qualify for the Champions League or Europa League, there is a likelihood that he would be brought into camp for friendlies in Europe. After all, the number of goalkeepers the US has who are consistently playing top flight football in Europe is at one of its lowest levels that I can remember. The only one who is playing is Zack Steffen. Thinking back, we typically had two or three goalkeepers playing at a high level in Europe (only one outside of Europe would be Jonny Walker) over the past two decades at any given time. Not counting David Yelldell because he was mostly a bench player. 1990s Brad Friedel Ian Feuer Juergen Sommer Kasey Keller 2000s Brad Friedel Brad Guzan Kasey Keller Marcus Hahnemann Tim Howard 2010s Brad Guzan Marcus Hahnemann Tim Howard
Melia was the top MLS keeper for 3 straight seasons, but never was called to the NT or voted Keeper of the Year due to his humble background.
Tim Melia was never called up to the national team because he didn't get a starting role anywhere professionally, barring a brief loan stint in Charleston, until he was 29. He also won MLS Goalkeeper of the Year in 2017, so your background facts aren't correct.