This is not cover and nobody is pretending it is. $2.8M has been paid because Marek Rodák is straightforwardly better than what was already here, and the club has decided to stop waiting.
Beitar Jerusalem pay $3.8M, 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.
Mohamed Camara 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.
Add another name to the list: Hapoel Raanana have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Elad Madmon. The answer from Maccabi Tel Aviv has not changed — yet.
At 25 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.
He is doing things on a Saturday afternoon that nobody around him can answer, which is flattering for about one season and a problem after that. Maccabi Tel Aviv will not keep him by pretending otherwise.
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.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Hapoel Acre waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Maccabi Tel Aviv is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
Maccabi Tel Aviv have gone to Al-Ettifaq with a bid, and the supporters have gone to the internet with an opinion about it. Whether either changes anything is up to the selling club.
Mohamed Camara 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.
Add another name to the list: Beitar Jerusalem have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Sagiv Jehezkel. The answer from Maccabi Tel Aviv has not changed — yet.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Anis Ayash and Maccabi Tel Aviv agree another 4 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andrija Radulović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Willy Agada 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.
“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Almog Benayoun and Hapoel Haifa agree another 3 years.
“I have done everything asked of me in training and it has not changed a thing on a Saturday.” The most familiar complaint in football, and one Hapoel Haifa will have to answer with minutes or with a transfer.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Itay Buganim trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Nobody at Hapoel Haifa 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.
24 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Hapoel Haifa lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Words at Hapoel Haifa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Andrija Radulović 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.
Aolin Zhang 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.
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 Anis Ayash is on it.
A conversation in the manager’s office, and a commitment that came out of it. Promises like that are cheap to make and expensive to break, and George Diba has written the date down.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Oz Bilu trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 12 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
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.
Hapoel Tel Aviv left with the points after a 1‑2 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
The dugout21 Dec 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 1‑2 defeat, delivered by Gil Cohen to a room that had heard them before.
Nobody at Hapoel Haifa 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.
Clubs make promises constantly and the page usually only hears about them when they are broken. This one was honoured, and the dressing room noticed that faster than any supporter did.
In brief
SquadGetting past Yoav Gerafi has become the hardest job in the division
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 7.90 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Marked 8.14 — 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.
Position 4, 26 points, and every result so far reduced to one line. The second half of the season starts with the same squad and a different set of expectations.
The dugout23 Nov 2026
The view from the dugout
“We controlled it. There were spells I did not like and we will look at them, but the group showed me something.” Gil Cohen, on a 3‑0 win that he was already picking apart on the walk to the press room.
Successful dribbles: 13. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Hapoel Haifa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Andrija Radulović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Andrija Radulović. 2‑1 against Beitar Jerusalem, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
At 21 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
At 35 he is supposed to be managing his minutes. Instead he was marked 8.83 and looked, for ninety minutes, exactly like the player everybody remembers.
3 wins in a row changes how opponents warm up: quieter, more glances across. Runs end, everybody knows that — but nobody in this dressing room is planning for it.
Not a run of form — an actual step up, held for months. At 21 he is doing things at this level he could not do at the start of the season, and the coaching staff will tell you exactly which of them.
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.
The clubs have settled the fee and he has settled his wages. What remains is a medical and a photograph, and around Hapoel Haifa people have started saying his name in the past tense.
He is going to Beitar Jerusalem, the club has $1.7M it did not have on Friday, and the phone-ins have already decided how they feel about that. Selling well and selling somebody they loved are not the same skill.
Beitar Jerusalem pay $1.7M, 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.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Young Boys keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Alon Turgeman 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 Andrija Radulović was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
It is the quietest way a club tells you what its ambitions are. The money was asked for, the money was refused, and the people who work there every day now know exactly where they stand.