Marked for Mathew Ryan
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Successful dribbles: 40. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
Squad12 Oct 2026
Ayman Ashraf was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match10 Oct 2026
Maccabi Netanya left with the points after a 0‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Squad12 Oct 2026
The manager makes an example of Roy Revivo
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Boardroom12 Oct 2026
The music was off and the showers ran late. What was said in that dressing room stays there, but Saturday will publish the minutes.
Player ratings12 Oct 2026
Shots: 14. Goals: none. The chances were there and they were good ones, and they went into the stand, the goalkeeper's arms and the side netting in roughly that order.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Market7 Sep 2026
“I have ambitions, and I would like the club to share them.” Nobody has asked to leave and nobody has been shown the door — but a player chooses that sentence carefully, and a boardroom hears it exactly as it was meant.
Market7 Sep 2026
The deal that would have taken Sayed Abu Farchi to Hapoel Tel Aviv has collapsed at the last stage, and he reports back to Maccabi Tel Aviv with a summer to forget and a season still to play. Nobody is saying which side walked away.
Boardroom7 Sep 2026
310% of the income goes out in wages at Maccabi Tel Aviv
Every club in football pays most of what it earns to its players. Paying nearly all of it is a different arrangement, and it has ended the same way every time somebody has tried it.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Successful dribbles: 19. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
Marked 8.45 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
Player ratings7 Sep 2026
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.10, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad7 Sep 2026
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Roy Revivo, and the manager let it.
Squad7 Sep 2026
Itamar Noy was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
From our football correspondent
Steady
Market17 Aug 2026
The offer from Bnei Yehuda for Yonas Malede was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad17 Aug 2026
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Maccabi Tel Aviv this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad17 Aug 2026
Mathew Ryan has outgrown this division
There is a level at which a footballer stops being tested and starts being contained, and he reached it some time ago. Maccabi Tel Aviv know it, and so does everybody who watches him.
Market17 Aug 2026
Elad Madmon told to find a new club
“They were honest with me, and I would rather know.” Elad Madmon has been informed he is not in the manager's thinking at Maccabi Tel Aviv.
Squad17 Aug 2026
A year in and the language has not come, the city has not opened up, and he eats alone more often than anybody at Maccabi Tel Aviv would like to admit. It is showing on Saturdays.
Market17 Aug 2026
Every press conference now starts and ends the same way: with Ion Nicolăescu’s future. The manager has run out of new ways to say nothing.
In brief
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Squad
Dor Peretz has seen what the next man earns
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Market
The shop window has Ido Shahar in it
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Loan watch
The goals keep arriving from Bar Lin’s exile