Shareef Kayouf has gone, the accounts have $2.2M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
Maccabi Haifa asked and Portsmouth said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Maccabi Haifa can pretend not to have heard.
Hapoel Beer Sheva paid $2.2M and Maccabi Haifa took it, which is the whole story in one sentence. The longer version involves a wage budget and will be told all season.
$410.0K 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.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jelle Bataille was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The name of Zohar Zasano has come up in conversations Maccabi Haifa were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
50 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Maccabi Netanya lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Aziz Ouattara 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 paperwork is done long before the player is. Adam Khan has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Maccabi Netanya have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Omri Shamir was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Squad31 May 2027
7 new faces, and Maccabi Netanya 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.
The loan was meant to give him football. 4 games and 0 goals later he is back at Maccabi Netanya no further forward, and everybody involved will explain why it was not their doing.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Gonzalo Puntano trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
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 Oz Bilu is on it.
Guy Melamed 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.
Squad8 Mar 2027
Words at Maccabi Haifa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Cédric Don 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.
Nobody at Maccabi 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.
The dugout8 Mar 2027
The manager has not finished forgetting Kenji Gorré's mistake
Publicly it is behind everybody. It is not behind the man who picks the team, and the only place that shows is a team sheet. He will get another chance; he will get it in a match that matters less.
Successful dribbles: 23. There was always a defender in front of him and there was never a defender in front of him for long.
Squad26 Oct 2026
Words at Maccabi Haifa training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jelle Bataille 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.
Peter Agba 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.
Match24 Oct 2026
Another one collected away from home
3 on the bounce on the road for Maccabi Haifa. The coaches leave early, arrive at unlovely grounds in the dark, and keep coming home with three points.
Marked 8.16 — 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.
6 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.