Maccabi Petach Tikva have gone to Hapoel Kiryat Shmona 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.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $267.0K — a club that wants Rotem Hatuel enough to be asked twice.
The offer went to Hapoel Haifa this week and it is theirs to answer. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loud the door closes.
At 20 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.
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 Petach Tikva this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Maccabi Petach Tikva offered $70.0K; Hapoel Kiryat Shmona said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
It is the rarest sequence in football: supporters ask for something, and the club goes and does it. $2.2M for Amir Ganah, and for one week nobody is complaining about anything.
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 Petach Tikva 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 Ido Cohen was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Nobody will confirm this and nothing else explains the last month of selections. A costly error buys a player a period of being second choice that is always longer than the error was.
It has been denied twice and printed three times, which is the usual arithmetic. Until Franck Rivollier signs something — a contract at Maccabi Petach Tikva or anywhere else — this column belongs to him.
Nothing in writing and nothing in public: a word about playing time, given face to face at Maccabi Petach Tikva. The team sheets over the next month will show whether it was worth having.
The chances are being made and something is happening between the making and the finishing. 3 matches now, and the anxiety in the ground arrives a little earlier every week.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Ido Cohen was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The dugout22 Feb 2027
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 0‑2 Shon David left the room before anybody could ask which.
A touch he did not want, a bounce he could not have read, and his name in the wrong column. There is no consoling a man after one of these, and Maccabi Petach Tikva will not try tonight.
0‑1 to Hapoel Haifa, and no complaints worth printing. The performance asked for nothing more than it got.
Squad15 Feb 2027
Ido Cohen falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
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.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
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 Petach Tikva this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.