Ironi Tiberias have issued a blunt warning to Israeli football's disciplinary establishment: take even one more point off the club over the so-called double-contracts affair, and Ligat Ha'al will be watching an entirely youth-led side for the rest of the season. "If they deduct even one point from us, we'll go up with youth players," a senior club official said this week, according to Sport5. "We'll turn it into an economic year, and any player who wants to leave will be released."

The threat followed a hearing on Wednesday before the Israel Football Association's supreme disciplinary tribunal, where Tiberias had petitioned over the ongoing proceedings tied to its handling of player contracts. The judges declined to grant the dismissal the club's petition sought, siding instead with the federation's prosecutor.

Tiberias then withdrew the petition altogether — but owner Arie Kalmanzon insisted the club still came away encouraged, describing assurances he said were given by the prosecution's lawyer during the session. "The judges discussed the petition but refused to dismiss it outright, as the prosecutor had asked," Kalmanzon said, according to Sport5. "We withdrew it. We felt a meaningful and positive step had been taken."

The case dates back to a plea agreement approved by the disciplinary tribunal in April, after Tiberias was found to have signed undisclosed supplementary agreements with players — arrangements that bypassed the league's budget-oversight process, a practice known in Israeli football as "double contracts." That settlement cost the club eight points in the 2025/26 season, a further six points for the current 2026/27 campaign, a fine of 500,000 shekels and a ban on registering new players in the January 2027 transfer window. Former club figure Miki Bitan received a seven-year suspension from football activity over the affair.

Those six points are already gone from Tiberias's ledger before a ball has been kicked in the new Ligat Ha'al season, and this week's hearing raised the prospect of the federation coming back for more. Sport5 did not specify how many additional points are under consideration, only that the club now regards any further deduction as a red line.

The contracts case is not the only disciplinary front the club is fighting. Head coach Eliran Hudeda remains sidelined in a separate matter, after the Israel Anti-Doping Agency and the federation opened an investigation into allegedly excessive saline infusions given to Tiberias players before a match against Ashdod last season — a complaint Ashdod itself filed. Tiberias has maintained the fluids were legal and administered within permitted limits.

With Hudeda unable to work the touchline, the club has turned to Maurice Ozen, the veteran head of its youth department, who has been approved to serve as interim first-team coach for one month.

The squad Ozen inherits for now is already stretched thin. Several players are suspended, the club's foreign-player quota is close to full following the summer arrival of Ivorian midfielder Chris Quacko, and new signing Gal Metuak has yet to be registered to play while his contract paperwork is finalised.

None of it has dented the club's spending ambitions. Tiberias have set a budget of 21 million shekels for the season, three million more than last year, with 13.5 million earmarked for player salaries — a sign the ownership still intends to compete near the top of the table even as it fights the federation on two fronts.

For a club that has spent the close season lurching between tribunal hearings and doping inquiries, the youth-team threat reads as much as a statement of frustration as a genuine tactical plan. But with the disciplinary process still unresolved, Tiberias's hierarchy has made clear it sees a further points penalty as the point at which cooperation ends.