“I have tried. I have really tried, and every day I wake up in the wrong place.” Nobody at Bnei Sakhnin can coach that out of a man, and nobody there is pretending to.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Tyrese Asante was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
A point taken on 89 minutes is worth exactly one point and considerably more than that to a dressing room. This side does not stop, which is a reputation worth more than the result.
Johan N'Zi and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
He won it back and then made something of it, which is two jobs and the reason the scoreline looks the way it does. 9 combined actions and a mark of 7.00, and not one of them will make a highlights package.
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Eitan Cohen after the 2‑2 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
“This is not anger. I have thought about it for months, and nothing that has happened lately changed my mind.” The request is on a desk at Bnei Sakhnin, and it is not being withdrawn.
Tyrese Asante 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.
Marked 9.02 — 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.
He is 23 and the ground already sings his name, which is a thing that happens to local boys and almost never to signings. Everything from here is measured against an affection he did nothing to earn except be from here.
Squad15 Feb 2027
9 new faces, and Bnei Sakhnin are still learning each other
A squad rebuilt inside one window pays for it in a currency nobody budgets for. The football is not worse than the sum of the players; it is worse than the sum of the players who have played together before.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Eitan Cohen on a 4‑1 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Bnei Sakhnin is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
There is no worse way to lose a footballer. Matty Cudjoe has pre-agreed a move away, which means every appearance between now and June is made by a man the club can no longer sell, and somebody upstairs will be asked why the contract was allowed to get here.
Steven Nufour and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Eden Shamir, and the manager let it.
Boardroom28 Dec 2026
110% of the income goes out in wages at Bnei Sakhnin
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.
Boardroom28 Dec 2026
Nobody left the Bnei Sakhnin dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
Squad28 Dec 2026
Words at Bnei Sakhnin training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Maron Ghantous is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
The dugout28 Dec 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑3 Eitan Cohen left the room before anybody could ask which.
In brief
The dugoutSomebody else is better right now than Amit Lemkin
28 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Bnei Sakhnin lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
1‑1, and both dressing rooms will call it two points lost. A draw that asked plenty of questions and answered none of them.
The dugout7 Dec 2026
Eden Shamir is still being punished for one mistake
Nobody will confirm it and the team sheets confirm it every week. One error has bought him a spell as second choice that is already longer than the error deserved.
The dugout7 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Eitan Cohen chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bnei Sakhnin this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
A 1‑1 draw with Hapoel Raanana leaves the dressing room somewhere between relief and regret.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Eitan Cohen chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
The one version of being left out a player cannot argue with, and the one he takes worst. Somebody else has been better and the team sheet says so, in public, every week until it changes.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Hapoel Kfar Saba next, and one man in the Bnei Sakhnin dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Johan N'Zi and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“There are things I liked and things we will be doing on Tuesday until they are right.” 0‑0, and a manager who had already decided what Tuesday looked like.
13 shots, and a count that reads like a good afternoon until you check the other column. Strikers survive weeks like this on the understanding that the chances keep arriving; the day they stop is the day it becomes a problem.
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
Every manager keeps a short list in his head of the men he wants on the pitch when the stakes rise, and it is never published. The team sheets for the big afternoons say Amit Lemkin is on it.
In brief
Player ratingsThe chances came and went for Artur Miranyan
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: another club keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
At 26 the improving is meant to be over. It is not: 3 points better than the mark taken at the start of the year, which is the sort of thing that happens to players who take the boring parts of the job seriously.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Squad19 Oct 2026
Words at Bnei Sakhnin training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Maron Ghantous is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Amit Lemkin’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Bnei Sakhnin needing him to play as if none of it matters.
Everything was agreed with another club and then the doctor spoke. Bnei Sakhnin have walked away from a signing on the advice of somebody who never saw him play, which is how it is supposed to work.
At 21 he is doing things this season that he could not do last season, and doing them every week. Form comes and goes; this has stayed long enough to be called something else.
“The manager did not use many words, and he did not need to.” Jubayer Bushnak has his answer from Bnei Sakhnin; what he does with it is the next window’s story.
Nobody at Bnei Sakhnin will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
Maccabi Netanya next, and one man in the Bnei Sakhnin dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Bnei Sakhnin. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
There is a particular kind of quiet from an away end watching one man score twice. Artur Miranyan provided it, and the 8.49 beside his name is if anything generous to everybody else.
There is a particular warmth a ground reserves for a 22-year-old it feels ownership of. Matty Cudjoe has it now, and everything he does for the rest of his time here will be measured against the goodwill he was handed for free.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 2‑0, Eitan Cohen could afford to be generous.
The team at the top of the table next, and the honest measure of where this side actually is. Anybody can beat the club below them; the question is what happens against Bnei Yehuda.
There is no complaint available here and everybody involved knows it, which does not make the walk to the bench any shorter. Form is the only currency in football that cannot be borrowed against.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $105.7K — a club that wants Itay Ben-Hemo enough to be asked twice.
Bnei Sakhnin had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Central, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
$100.0K on the table at Maccabi Tel Aviv. The manager wanted him, the board agreed a number, and the only voices still to be heard are the ones at the other club.
Boards get told what they have done wrong for years and hear nothing on the days they get it right. This is one of those days: Amit Lemkin from Hapoel Tel Aviv for $790.0K, and a ticket office having a very good morning.
Bnei Sakhnin asked and Maccabi Tel Aviv said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Minute 88, against Hapoel Haifa, and a goal that felt like a win to everybody who had stayed. It was a draw. Nobody leaving the ground will describe it as one.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Bnei Sakhnin this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Amit Lemkin is 20, and Bnei Sakhnin have signed him for the player he will be rather than the one he is. The first team can wait; the point of a deal like this is the years it buys.
Two goals and a mark of 8.71 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Maccabi Tel Aviv have kept their man, and Hapoel Tel Aviv go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
Bnei Sakhnin pay $790.0K, and the deal is done. The number reads well on a balance sheet; whether it reads well on the pitch is next season's question.
A midfielder is measured on whether the team functions when he is on the pitch, which is nearly impossible to see and completely obvious in retrospect. 10 actions, 6.97, and a manager who will not be substituting him again in a hurry.
The name of Dan Dabbur has come up in conversations Hapoel Tel Aviv were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Stav Toriel signs something — a contract at Hapoel Tel Aviv or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
$790.0K settles it between the clubs for Amit Lemkin
Hapoel Tel Aviv have accepted the money. What Bnei Sakhnin do not yet have is the man, and between here and the photograph is a conversation about wages that both sides are dreading.
Bnei Sakhnin had done everything except persuade the man himself. He stays at Dynamo Kyiv, and the manager goes back to the drawing board with the money still in the bank.
Bnei Sakhnin asked and Bnei Yehuda said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Amir Ben-Shimon and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Johan N'Zi was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The plan went upstairs and came back down. Nothing about that will make a headline anywhere else, and everybody who works at the training ground will remember it for years.
Hapoel Haifa next, and one man in the Bnei Sakhnin dressing room knows their training ground better than his own. The reception will tell him what they thought of him.
In brief
Looking aheadLooking ahead: the trip to Hapoel Haifa
SquadSaná Gomes is the talk of the training ground