Hapoel Tel Aviv have moved to secure one of Israeli youth football's more coveted names, signing Jonathan Ben Simeon to a three-year contract with a club option for two further years, ONE reports.
The 2008-born defender-midfielder, who has already featured for Israel's youth national team, arrives from Hapoel Acre, where he had also broken into senior first-team football despite his age.
According to the report, Hapoel Tel Aviv paid a transfer fee of roughly ₪80,000 to prise him away from Acre — a modest sum by senior-team standards, but a marker of how highly the club rates him.
The signing did not happen in a vacuum. ONE reports that Hapoel Beersheba and Maccabi Tel Aviv were also chasing Ben Simeon's signature before Hapoel Tel Aviv won out, with agents Roy Daniel and Yarden Perin brokering the move.
The Hebrew headline's question — whether this time he'll "go all the way" — nods to last season's near-miss for Hapoel Tel Aviv's youth side, which topped the youth league table for most of the campaign before losing the championship to Maccabi Tel Aviv in a tight finish.
Club officials cited in the report point to the creativity and quality Ben Simeon adds to that squad, with an eye on fast-tracking him toward the senior setup if he settles in quickly.
He is expected to be available in time for the opening round of the league season, with August 15 given as the date he becomes eligible to feature for his new club.
For Hapoel Acre, it is the latest example of a smaller-market club developing talent that bigger sides come calling for — a familiar pattern in Israeli football's lower and mid-table youth pipelines.
