Roni Levy took his seat in front of the cameras on Thursday for a press conference streamed live on ONE's website, previewing a fixture with an unusually personal edge: his Maccabi Netanya side host the club he once managed, Beitar Jerusalem, in round two of the Ligat Ha'al season.
Levy, 59, is in his second spell in charge of Netanya's 'diamonds', having returned to the club in January 2026 after an earlier stint there in 2015. Between those two spells he took in stops around Israeli football, including a turbulent year on the Beitar Jerusalem bench from mid-2019 to the summer of 2020.
Saturday's meeting carries extra weight for Beitar too. Their scheduled round-one trip to face Hapoel Tel Aviv was postponed at the Reds' request, meaning the capital club still have not played a competitive league minute this season heading into the Netanya fixture.
The match itself has also been relocated. With Teddy Stadium unavailable for league fixtures until after the coming international break, the league's organisers had promised to find Beitar a 'large and central' alternative venue — a commitment ONE reported has now been met, with the game moved to Bloomfield Stadium in Tel Aviv.
Kickoff is set for 20:30 on Saturday, August 29, with the broadcast carried on Sport4.
Netanya arrive off the back of a goalless opening-round draw away to Bnei Sakhnin, a result that gave Levy a clean sheet to build on even without a first win on the board. His press conference focused on preparations for the visit of a Beitar side he knows intimately from the inside, having sat in their dugout through a difficult 2019-20 campaign.
Neither club has had the ideal start to the new campaign for different reasons — Netanya still searching for their first goals and win, Beitar yet to kick a ball competitively — which makes Saturday's Bloomfield meeting an early opportunity for both to get their season moving.
