Maccabi Haifa's summer-long pursuit of Omri Glazer has come down to a single number. Red Star Belgrade are demanding roughly €250,000 — close to a million shekels — before they release the Israel goalkeeper from his contract, according to a report published by the Israeli outlet Sport1 on Friday afternoon.
By the report's account, the fee is the last obstacle standing. Glazer has already agreed personal terms on a return to the club where he spent five seasons and is set to become one of the highest earners in the squad. What remains open is what, if anything, Haifa must pay the Serbian champions to walk him out of the door.
Red Star's leverage sits in the paperwork. Transfermarkt lists Glazer's contract in Belgrade as running to June 2027, and Friday's report describes his terms there as exceptionally high. The Serbian club are said to accept that the goalkeeper is heading home, and to have squared their own financial obligations to him, yet they are still pressing for additional compensation, currently pitched at around a million shekels. Sources cited in the report expect the matter to be settled shortly, at which point Glazer would sign.
Glazer, 30, left Israeli football three years ago as Hapoel Be'er Sheva's State Cup-winning goalkeeper and would return as one of the country's most decorated exports. Signed by Red Star in the summer of 2023 for a reported €1.5m, he has since collected three consecutive Serbian league titles. His defining night came in the Champions League, when he was credited with 13 saves — reported at the time as a group-stage record — in a defeat away to Manchester City. He has 23 caps for Israel.
For Haifa, the move would be a reunion rather than a gamble. Glazer first came through the door in 2016 and was part of the squad that won the 2020-21 championship, a spell he has himself previously described as a complicated one, before rebuilding his standing at Be'er Sheva and then abroad.
The urgency is structural. Friday's report suggests the club's hierarchy do not expect either of the goalkeepers currently on the books to carry the position this season and want the matter resolved quickly. The same report claims Haifa are in advanced negotiations to sell one of those keepers to Ukrainian side Metalist Kharkiv for a little over €3m, a sum that would dwarf the compensation in dispute with Belgrade.
Friday night added a pointed footnote in Belgrade. In Red Star's 5-0 league win over Mačva Šabac, the champions started a 17-year-old, Savo Radnović, in goal, with Glazer left out of the matchday goalkeeping picture altogether. Israeli coverage framed the selection as a question — a possible declaration of intent about a keeper the club is prepared to lose — rather than a confirmed step in the negotiation; no new fee, agreement or timetable was reported alongside it.
It caps a busy week of squad-building in any case. Haifa announced on Thursday that they had reached an agreement with Andrija Novakovich, the American-born striker who spent last season with Reggiana in Italy's second tier; he is expected in Israel in the coming days for a medical before signing. A first-choice goalkeeper is the loudest remaining item on a list that, per Friday's report, also stretches to a central defender and cover at left-back.
The calendar supplies its own deadline. Haifa open their Toto Cup campaign against city rivals Hapoel Haifa at the end of the month, and earlier Israeli reporting suggested the club hoped to have their new goalkeeper in place by then. Until the compensation question is answered, nothing is signed — but on Friday's evidence, nobody involved expects the answer to be no.
By Saturday morning the number had moved, upwards, and towards resolution. A further Israeli report put the sum Haifa will pay Belgrade at an estimated €300,000, framing it as the price of closing the deal rather than a demand still on the table, with Glazer expected to land in Israel within days. The same report said his personal terms are settled at roughly €400,000 a season before bonuses, and that, having trained with Red Star throughout, he should be match-fit for the Toto Cup opener next weekend. It also named the goalkeeper bound for Metalist Kharkiv as Heorhiy Yermakov, with Haifa said to retain a percentage of any future sale. Nothing has been formally announced by either club.
