The Israel Football Association has shelved, for now, a new points-based system that would have decided which league children's and pre-youth teams play in next season, bowing to pressure from clubs who feared being knocked down a tier before a ball was kicked, ONE reports.
The association's League and Cup Committee confirmed the U-turn after the Youth Committee reconsidered the criteria it had published just weeks earlier, on August 5, and recommended a fresh look at how clubs are ranked for placement in these non-competitive junior divisions.
The mechanism, as originally drawn up, would have scored clubs on factors such as the size and depth of their youth set-up, the number of players they have supplied to national youth squads, and the qualifications held by their coaching staff — a shift away from the geography-based placement long used lower down the football pyramid.
Opposition came quickly and from a specific corner of the game: dozens of clubs, mostly those without a senior team of their own or with a senior side stuck in one of the lower divisions, warned that the new formula would push their children's and youth teams out of leagues they currently belong to, regardless of results on the pitch.
In a statement explaining the reversal, the association said that "following the discussion held, and upon further reconsideration of this matter, it was decided that the aforementioned issue requires an in-depth and renewed examination of the relevant criteria for placement in the non-competitive leagues."
Practically, that means the coming season's placements will run on the existing geographic and professional criteria that have been used in recent years, rather than the new ranking table — with the association saying the new criteria will now be introduced a season later than planned.
It is not the first time this year that grassroots clubs have forced the federation to soften a ranking-driven shake-up of the junior pyramid: a related placement change for the top tier of youth football, announced on July 1, was itself adjusted into a geographically split format after clubs lobbied against being ranked out of the senior bracket.
For now, the episode leaves Israel's children's and youth football structure largely as it was, but the association's own language — calling for "deeper and renewed examination" — signals the ranking debate is far from settled and will resurface as clubs and the federation try again before next season.
