Avraham "Avram" Grant (; born Avraham Granat; ) is an Israeli professional football manager who currently manages the Zambia national football team. He has spent the majority of his career coaching and managing in Israel, winning a number of national league and cup victories with different teams, and also managing the Israel national team for four years.
Grant moved to England in 2006 to become technical director of Portsmouth before being appointed director of football at Chelsea in July 2007. Two months later, in September 2007, following the departure of José Mourinho, Grant was appointed as Chelsea's manager. Despite steering the team into the Champions League and League Cup finals, as well as contesting the Premier League title to the last day, his contract was terminated at the end of the season.
Grant returned to Portsmouth as director of football in October 2009, and was made manager the following month. After the club's relegation to the Football League Championship Grant resigned and, in June 2010, was appointed as manager of West Ham United, a role he held up until May 2011, when he was sacked after the club was relegated to the Football League Championship.
After one championship season managing Partizan Belgrade and one season as the technical director for Thai club BEC Tero Sasana, Grant was appointed coach of the Ghana national football team in 2014. He stepped down from the position after a defeat in the semi-finals of the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations.
In January 2018, Grant moved to India to join the Indian Super League side NorthEast United as a technical advisor, a day after the team head coach João de Deus was sacked due to a poor start.
Biography
Avraham Granat was born in Petah Tikva, Israel. His father, Meir Granat, was born into a devout Orthodox Jewish family in Mława, Poland. Meir's family fled to the Soviet Union in 1941, during the Holocaust; there they were exiled to Kolyma, Siberia, where most of the family died. In a 2008 interview his father recalled burying his grandfather, Avraham Granat—after whom Grant was named—with his own hands. After being repatriated to Poland after the war's end in 1945, Meir emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel) in violation of the policy of that time, and was arrested and detained in Cyprus. He ultimately settled in Petah Tikva, where he and Grant's mother Aliza Nisan, an Iraqi-Jewish immigrant to Israel, met.
Grant shortened his surname from Granat in the late 1980s. He was married to Israeli television personality Tzufit Grant. They have a son and a daughter. The couple have announced they split up in September 2014.
In October 2009, Grant's father died aged 82 from complications following surgery to remove a kidney stone. Grant had flown to Israel and was by his side.
On 20 February 2008, Chelsea Football Club announced that Grant had received anti-Semitic death threats from unknown sources. One of the packages sent to Grant's home was said to have contained a white powder that, after investigation, proved to be harmless.
On 4 February 2010, it was reported that Grant was facing police questioning over an incident on 18 December 2009 at a Thai brothel in Horton Heath, Hampshire.
On 13 June 2016, following extensive research into his father's Polish-Jewish heritage, Avram Grant received his Polish passport from the Polish Embassy in London.- His Polish passport has his name written as Abraham Grant.
Career
Israel
Grant's professional coaching career started at age 18, in 1972, as youth coach of his home-town team, Hapoel Petah Tikva. In 1986, after a 14-year spell in this job, he was promoted to first team coach, leading the club to two Toto Cup victories, in 1990 and 1991, thus bringing Hapoel Petah Tikva back to the top of Israeli football after nearly 25 years. During this era Petah Tikva fought regularly for the championship against Shlomo Scharf's Maccabi Haifa. In his last season in Petah Tikva, Grant lost both the championship and the Israel State Cup within 3 days to Maccabi Haifa, in a chain of events which is commonly known in Israel as "the Double robbery". The next year the club won its first major title in 30 years, by winning its second-ever Israeli Cup.
The following season Grant moved to coach Maccabi Tel Aviv winning Liga Leumit (then the top division) in his first season with them, with a 13-point advantage over the second place team. Maccabi Tel Aviv lost out closely in the final of the Israeli Cup and was thus denied a historic double. The cup was won by Maccabi Tel Aviv under Grant's control, however, in 1994, followed with another championship in 1995.