Avram Grant

Avram Grant (Hebrew: אברהם גרנט; born 6 February 1955) is an Israeli professional association football manager currently serving as head coach of the Zambia national team. With a career spanning over five decades, Grant has achieved domestic success in Israel, including multiple league titles with Maccabi Tel Aviv, and notable international runs such as guiding Chelsea to the 2008 UEFA Champions League final and Ghana to the final of the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations.

Grant began coaching in his native Israel at age 18 with the youth team of Hapoel Petah Tikva, later securing four Israeli Premier League titles across stints at Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa. He managed the Israel national team from 2002 to 2006, qualifying them for UEFA Euro 2004 play-offs. Transitioning to England, he served as director of football at Chelsea before succeeding José Mourinho as manager in 2007, finishing second in the Premier League and reaching the Champions League final, lost on penalties to Manchester United. Subsequent roles included stints at Portsmouth, where he earned praise for resilience amid financial turmoil, and West Ham United, though both ended in relegation.

Avram Grant was born on 6 May 1955 in Petah Tikva, Israel, to parents whose lives were shaped by displacement and survival amid 20th-century upheavals. His father, Meir Granat, originated from a devout Orthodox Jewish family in Mława, Poland; at age 15 during World War II, Meir was deported to Siberia by Soviet authorities after his family's flight from Nazi-occupied Poland, where he endured the starvation deaths of both parents and five siblings, burying them in the snow with his bare hands. Meir survived these ordeals and eventually immigrated to Israel, where he married Grant's mother, the daughter of an Iraqi lawyer compelled to flee persecution in Iraq.