Nir Katz doesn't usually need to raise his voice to end a negotiation. When AEK Athens called Hapoel Be'er Sheva one final time to try to prise away Kings Kangwa, the Beersheba chief executive simply told them no — in terms blunt enough that they've become the story. "I'm not giving him to you, not even for 10 million euro," Katz said, according to ONE, and with that the Greek club's pursuit of Beersheba's best player was over.
The stand-off centred on a single fixture: Beersheba's Champions League qualifying tie against Icelandic side Vikingur Reykjavik. AEK's sporting director, Javier Ribalta, first approached Beersheba with a fee attached to a condition — he wanted a 50 percent discount on Kangwa's asking price if the Zambian midfielder was allowed to play for Beersheba against Vikingur before completing his move to Athens.
Beersheba said no. Katz was not willing to let his club's own European campaign be discounted away in someone else's transfer math, and the club held firm that Kangwa would stay available for the qualifier regardless of what any suitor was offering.
Ribalta called back with a revised proposal, according to ONE: AEK would now pay the full, undiscounted fee, but still wanted assurances Kangwa would be withheld from the Vikingur match to protect their incoming asset. That was the point at which Katz drew the line for good, delivering the refusal that has since done the rounds in Israeli football media.
It wasn't really about money by that stage. Katz's point, as ONE reported it, was that no fee — real or hypothetically doubled to ten million euro — would buy Kangwa out of a match that mattered to Beersheba itself. The AEK deal collapsed there.
Panathinaikos, who had also been tracking Kangwa through the summer, stepped into the opening AEK left behind. Unlike AEK, the Greek giants agreed to Beersheba's condition outright: Kangwa would remain in the Beersheba squad and be free to face Vikingur Reykjavik in Champions League qualifying before formally switching clubs.
That concession sealed it. Beersheba confirmed the sale to Panathinaikos, with Walla Sport reporting the package at roughly €4.5 million — around €3.8 million paid upfront plus a further €700,000 in add-ons, a deal Israel Hayom described as a historic fee for the club.
It caps a rapid rise for the 27-year-old. Kangwa arrived at Beersheba in the summer of 2024 from Red Star Belgrade for a reported fee in the region of €800,000 and quickly became the team's creative fulcrum, contributing 12 goals and 11 assists across 40 appearances last season by some Israeli media tallies.
For Katz, the episode is as much a statement about Beersheba's leverage as it is about one player. AEK arrived with a bigger financial pull than most Israeli clubs are used to negotiating against, and still left empty-handed because it wouldn't meet Beersheba on the one term the club actually cared about.
