Maccabi Haifa are working to add a new centre-back before the new Israeli season begins, and according to ONE the club has turned to a defender with an unusually well-travelled résumé for someone still only 23: Nigel Lonwijk, currently on Wolverhampton Wanderers' books.
The move, ONE reports, is designed to fill the void left by Abdoulaye Seck. The Senegalese centre-back was a fixture at the back for Haifa for four seasons, making 147 appearances and scoring 14 goals, before his contract talks broke down over the length of a new deal and he signed instead for Saudi Arabia's newly promoted Al-Faisaly this summer.
Lonwijk is a product of PSV Eindhoven's academy, where he spent roughly a decade before leaving for England and signing with Wolves in January 2020 as a highly regarded teenage prospect. Despite that pedigree, and a contract extension at Molineux along the way, he has never made a competitive first-team appearance for the Premier League club.
Instead, his development has come entirely out on loan. Since 2021 he has worn the shirts of Fortuna Sittard in the Eredivisie, Plymouth Argyle, Grasshopper Club Zürich, Wycombe Wanderers, Huddersfield Town and, most recently, Luton Town — six different loan spells in five years without ever cementing a place back at Wolves.
The high point came at Plymouth Argyle in 2022-23, where he made 35 appearances as the Devon club won the League One title. He has mostly featured in England's third and second tiers since, with brief stops at Wycombe Wanderers and Huddersfield Town before a longer loan at Luton Town in the Championship this past season, where he made 37 appearances and scored twice — often deployed at right-back rather than his more natural centre-back position, underlining a versatility that will appeal to Haifa's coaching staff.
Explaining his original decision to leave PSV for England, Lonwijk said at the time: "I love challenges. I've always loved English football, so the decision wasn't difficult for me. After ten years at Eindhoven I needed a change of atmosphere. Wolves staff explained their plans for me, and I loved what I heard. I think it can advance my career."
That career advance never quite materialised at Molineux itself, and at international level his recognition has been similarly modest — a single cap for the Netherlands under-16s back in 2018, with no involvement at senior youth or full international level since.
For Maccabi Haifa, the logic is straightforward: a tall, athletic, left-sided defender still just 23, available after Wolves opted not to keep pushing him through their own pathway, arrives as a replacement for a proven starter without the transfer-market premium a fully established centre-back would command. ONE did not report financial terms of the move, and the precise structure of the deal — permanent transfer or loan — was not specified in the original report.
Whether Lonwijk can finally deliver on the promise that took him from PSV to Wolves as a teenager will now be tested in the Israeli Premier League, in a defence Haifa need rebuilt before their title defence gets under way.
