Hapoel Rishon LeZion have taken their pursuit of training compensation for departing defender Roei Zrihan to Israeli football's Institute for Player Status, demanding NIS 1,134,000 for a player they raised from the youth ranks into a fixture of their first team, ONE reports.

Zrihan, 24, is a product of Rishon LeZion's academy who worked his way up through the under-19 side and went on to make roughly 220 official appearances over five seasons in the National League, the country's second tier. As he now moves on from the club, the size of that contribution sits at the heart of the dispute.

Under Israeli football's status rules, a club that develops a young player through its youth system can seek development and training compensation when he leaves, particularly when no transfer fee changes hands directly. It is that mechanism Rishon LeZion have now invoked, and the figure they are seeking is a substantial one for a club at National League level.

The club's submission to the panel is blunt. "All the player's efforts to evade payment of fair and proper compensation are based on false factual claims," Rishon LeZion said, according to ONE, casting Zrihan's resistance to the demand as an attempt to dodge money the club believes it is owed after five years of development.

Zrihan and his attorney see it very differently. They are asking the Institute to grant a full exemption or, failing that, to cap any payment at a symbolic NIS 40,000 — a fraction of the club's claim. Central to their argument is a complaint about how his exit was handled: "the club chose not to offer any new contract and did not conduct genuine negotiations," the attorney told ONE.

That argument has been complicated by evidence that has emerged during the proceedings. WhatsApp messages from June 2026, cited by ONE, show Zrihan telling the club at the time: "I have several offers from abroad that we're examining." The messages cut against any suggestion that he lacked market interest, a point that could work in the club's favour when the panel weighs the size of the award.

For a National League side like Rishon LeZion, training compensation rulings of this kind are not a peripheral matter. Academy graduates who move on for little or no fee are one of the few revenue streams available to clubs outside the top flight, and a six-figure award would be a meaningful sum for a club competing below Ligat HaAl.

No ruling has yet been issued. The Institute for Player Status will now have to weigh the club's account of a player it developed for half a decade against Zrihan's case that he was allowed to leave without a genuine effort to keep him — with the WhatsApp evidence likely to loom large over wherever the panel eventually lands.