Kiryat Shmona are two players lighter after a summer of sales, and their manager's dressing room is choosing to see it as a selling point rather than a setback.

The northern club made it two Toto Cup wins from two on Saturday, edging Tiberias 1-0 away at Barel Stadium in Nof HaGalil courtesy of a 61st-minute goal from Abdullazadeh, following an emphatic 3-0 win over Maccabi Haifa in their previous outing.

It was afterwards, discussing the club's summer business, that centre-back Nemanja Ljubisavljević turned the conversation toward the two biggest names to have left Kiryat Shmona this off-season. "Two important players left the team - Martins and Mordechai - and I'm happy for them advancing," the Serbian said. "They're an example to us all that with the right work and the right performances, we can achieve the same thing."

He also gave a window into a difficult week for the squad. "We arrived emotionally drained after the big win over Haifa, but we talked it through in the dressing room and agreed we needed to work harder," Ljubisavljević said, explaining a performance he described as more of a grind than the rout that preceded it.

The player he referred to simply as "Martins" is Cristian Martínez, the Panamanian right-back who arrived at Kiryat Shmona on loan from Plaza Amador in July 2024 and quickly became a first-team fixture. His stock rose sharply this year: he started all three of Panama's group games at the 2026 World Cup in June, drawing attention from clubs across Europe.

That interest turned into a transfer this summer, with Sport5 confirming Martínez has signed for Slovan Bratislava of the Slovak top flight, in a deal reported to be worth around €800,000 to Kiryat Shmona - a significant fee by the standards of Israel's second-tier clubs.

Yair Mordechai's exit followed a similar arc. The winger, long tracked by several of Israel's bigger clubs, signed a four-year contract with Maccabi Haifa in May, with Kiryat Shmona due a development-fee payment reported in the region of NIS 800,000 to 1 million once the move was finalised.

Both departures leave holes in a squad now leaning on newer faces to fill them, and Saturday's clean sheet carried its own subplot: goalkeeper Daniel Tenenbaum, who spent time at Tiberias earlier in his career, kept out his old club without conceding.

Peruvian forward Adrian Ogrisha made his first appearance of the pre-season campaign in the win, with the club moving to dampen speculation linking him with a move abroad. Kiryat Shmona said no formal offer for the striker exists, despite reports of interest from a Chinese club earlier in the window.

For a club that has built its recent identity on developing players and cashing in when the offers arrive, Ljubisavljević's framing of Martínez and Mordechai as role models rather than losses is a deliberate message to the squad he is still building around them.