A release clause of just €100,000 has turned Maccabi Netanya's brightest academy product into the talk of Israeli football. Yarin Abuhatzira, a 16-year-old forward already training with the senior squad, was described on a national radio programme as the best player in the country for his age. With clubs said to be starting to ask about him, Netanya are scrambling to tear up the clause before somebody simply pays it.

"There is a huge player at Maccabi Netanya — they say he is the best in the country for his age," pundit Moshe Primo told listeners during the discussion, citing the esteem in which figures such as Benny Lam and Israel youth coach Ofir Haim are said to hold the teenager.

Former international Michael Zandberg argued that €100,000 is disproportionately low for a prospect of this calibre. Ofir Saar summed up the mood on the coast: "There is pressure around Maccabi Netanya, they are trying to close a new contract with him."

The hype has a paper trail. Abuhatzira, born in 2010 and the son of Shimon Abuhatzira — the 2008-09 league top scorer who won the title with Ironi Kiryat Shmona in 2011-12 and earned three Israel caps — spent last season playing a year above his age group and still finished with 29 goals in all competitions.

An Israel youth international, he signed a three-year academy contract in May 2025 and was promoted into the first-team setup before his 16th birthday.

Separate Israeli reporting corroborates the contract picture: his current deal runs for two more years and carries a buy-out worth only a few hundred thousand shekels, in line with the €100,000 figure. Chairman Gil Lev has accelerated talks on a new senior contract with improved terms, and the player's father and his agent, Nir Amir, recently visited Netanya's training camp in Poland to push the negotiations along. The proposed deal would extend his stay and remove the clause altogether.

Netanya's strongest card may be the one no bigger club can play: first-team football at 16. No named suitor has yet lodged a bid, and the expectation on all sides is that a new agreement will be signed. Until the paperwork is done, though, one of Israeli football's most coveted teenagers can be had for the price of a mid-table squad player's annual wage.