The transfer market for the big teams in Israeli football changed this summer.
Maccabi Haifa, Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel BS have each worked in their own way in an attempt to add foreign players, and the results in the field so far indicate the success or failure of the selection.
Maccabi Haifa approached the market of the second league in Spain and France and at the same time looked for players who had completed a contract, such as defender Daniel Sundgren who signed after concluding an agreement with Aris Thessaloniki.
Maccabi Tel Aviv focused on bringing back senior Israelis such as Eran Zehavi and Nir Bitton and only then returned to the foreign market.
Now, with a great many teams already playing in the European Enterprises qualifiers, the teams have admitted that "the market has shrunk greatly and should respond accordingly".
For example, Hapoel B'Shlosha followed the Brazilian winger Kadi, who plays in Karabakh, and the striker Lukas Zvolinski from Malka Gdansk of Poland. Despite offers of 400 and 650 thousand euros respectively, the teams refused to release the players to the Israeli Cup holder. In the Champions League and Conference League qualifiers and the two players have partnered, so they can not play with another team in Europe and thus their candidacy has dropped. Therefore, BS has turned to the Scandinavian market.
Yarmife.
Candidate for Hapoel B'Shlosha, Photo: AP
A number of players in the Swedish league, including strikers Alexander Jermaif from Hacker and Astrit Salmani from Hammarby, are taken into account.
The latter is being negotiated for the transfer.
Maccabi Tel Aviv is chasing the Danish Brondby stopper, Andreas Maxo.
"It's hard to bring in foreigners on a level"
"This is a new trend," explains players' agent Shahar Greenberg, who monitors the market every summer: "In Scandinavia the players are fit. Now you can see them in a league that has already started and after that you can bring them here in a big way. Most players in Scandinavia earn significantly less than in the country. Of up to 150,000 euros, so for 300,000 euros the players want to come to Israel, probably to a large team. "
A source at Hapoel BS explained: "At the moment, this is a market that can be run against.
In Eastern Europe it is more difficult, in Africa there is no longer a reality like before, and players are not enthusiastic about coming to Israel in general. "
Salmani.
Will reach the capital of the Negev ?, Photo: Reuters
Maccabi Haifa, as mentioned, acted differently and completed their foreign quota even before taking off for the training camp, but Carmel did not expect striker Franzi Piero to cost them 1.6 million euros.
"We estimated that we would pay a million euros," the club admitted.
Shahar Greenberg added his explanation: "It is difficult to bring foreign level foreigners to Israel. Even a second division in France or Spain hardly wants to come here. You have to think that players from here want to go to Spain or France, so why would they want to come here? A team like Maccabi Tel Aviv can pay A lot of money to bring in a player, Maccabi Haifa can pay 1.6 million euros for a striker, but not every team is capable of that. "
Maxo.
Will he come to Kiryat Shalom ?, Photo: AP
BS and Maccabi Tel Aviv will continue to search the Scandinavian market, and they will probably pay quite a bit to sign players, in the hope that they will be bingo professionally.
The conclusions are that a scouting system is an important thing, but even with it, the market has long had quite a few surprises and changes.
"Our market is the hardest there is. There is one of the highest turnover of foreigners here in Europe," says Greenberg. "Almost every group here changes foreigners every year, and it's like a recurring wheel."
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