The offer from Hapoel Kfar Saba for Liam Hermesh 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.
$720.0K was the most the club would pay and Beitar Jerusalem were asking for more. Deals like this are revived in the last week of a window roughly half the time, and everybody involved knows it.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Cédric Don was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
The most common injury in the game and the most rushed back from. Maccabi Haifa will quote 14 days and will be careful with it, because the second one is always worse than the first.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Eitan Benayoun and Maccabi Haifa agree another 3 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
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.
Every squad has one of these fixtures for somebody every season. This one is Omri Glazer’s: the club that knew him first, the supporters who will decide in the first minute whether to applaud, and Maccabi Haifa needing him to play as if none of it matters.
A year in and the city has not opened up, the language has not come, and lunch is eaten alone more often than anybody at Maccabi Haifa would admit. It shows on Saturdays.
Maccabi Tel Aviv wanted more than $5.5M and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
The offer went to Hapoel Kfar Saba 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.
The offer went to Beitar Jerusalem 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.
The number the board signed off was not enough. It has been asked again and raised its own offer to $367.1K — a club that wants Ben Lederman enough to be asked twice.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Cédric Don was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
Every shape has positions in it and this one does not have his. Maccabi Haifa will either change the shape, change his job, or change his club, and he is waiting to hear which.
Jelle Bataille has done the arithmetic and does not like the answer. Nothing corrodes a squad faster, and no club has ever solved it by explaining the wage structure to a footballer.
Maccabi Haifa have gone to LASK 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.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Maccabi Tel Aviv have kept their man, and Maccabi Haifa go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
The clubs had agreed and the player had not. A snub, and a public one: Bragantino keep him, and the supporters here are left wondering what he had heard about the place.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Jesse Akila has, at Maccabi Haifa, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
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.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Lior Atzili is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Avi Benayoun is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
Not now, not at any price the club was prepared to say out loud. Maccabi Tel Aviv have kept their man, and Maccabi Haifa go back to a list with one name crossed off it.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Maccabi Haifa know it.
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 Haifa this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Squad3 Aug 2026
Cédric Don 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.
Add another name to the list: Hapoel Kfar Saba have asked the question everybody in the game has been asking about Lior Kasa. The answer from Maccabi Haifa has not changed — yet.