Taleb Tavatha announced his retirement

at the age of 32, Taleb Tawatha Officially announced his retirement from football. In a message on his Instagram account, he wrote: “It’s time to say thank you, thank you to football. It was love at first touch, thank you to everyone who was part of my journey. Shokran ya football”.

The left defender grew up in the youth department of Maccabi Haifa and made his senior debut in 2009, in a 4:1 victory over Maccabi Ahi Nazareth. In 2010/11 he won the state championship with the club from Carmel. After winning the national cup with the Greens in 2015/16, he moved to the German Eintracht Frankfurt, where he played for three years from 2016 to 2019.

On April 25, 2017, Twatja scored a goal in the semi-finals of the German Cup in a victory over Borussia Monchengladbach, and in the final match against Dortmund he came on as a substitute in the 56th minute in a 2:1 loss. A season later he again reached the cup final with the team, this time he did not play against Bayern Munich, but was a part of winning the fifth cup in Frankfurt’s history.

Taleb Twatja, left, kisses the German Cup (Reuters)

Later, Twatja continued his journey in Europe when he signed for Ludgort Razgrad. There, he rarely played and recorded only nine appearances in which he provided three assists, but he did participate in winning the Bulgarian championship. In 2020, he returned for another term at Maccabi Haifa and was a partner in two more consecutive championships under Barak Becher. In the summer of 2022 he signed with Bnei Sakhnin, in Media he recorded 21 games in which he scored twice.

Tavatcha also played in the uniform of the Israeli national team, of course. In 2011 he was called up for the first time by coach Luis Fernandez. He made his senior debut for the Israel national team, in a 1:2 victory over Latvia in the qualifiers for Euro 2012. It was only in 2018 that he scored for the first time in the blue-white uniform, it was in a 0:7 win over Guatemala in a friendly match.

Taleb Tavatha in the Israel national team uniform (Reuters)

Twatja has a total of 288 appearances in all formats and throughout his career, he scored nine goals and assisted another 34 times. As mentioned, he has three championships in Israel, one championship in Bulgaria, one victory in the state cup, winning the Toto Cup with Maccabi Haifa (2021/22) and winning the champion of champions also with the Greens (2021), and winning the German Cup with Frankfurt.