Hapoel Petah Tikva walk into Saturday's Israeli Premier League opener at Ironi Tiberias under a cloud, and it took a club legend to try to talk the fan base down from the ledge. Eli Mahfoud, who spent 14 years and 362 games in the club's midfield, told ONE's Sicha Hayom podcast that coach Omer Peretz remains "an excellent coach, but he's not a magician" — a pointed reminder that results this preseason have had less to do with the man on the touchline than with what he has had to work with.
The comment lands after a brutal run: four straight defeats in the Toto Cup, the last of them a 1-0 loss away to Bnei Sakhnin that closed out the competition and arrived barely a week before the league kicks off. It was hardly the platform anyone at HaMoshava Stadium wanted heading into a top-flight season.
The defeat set off a wave of frustration among supporters online, according to PT News, with fans demanding to know where the club's reported 31 million shekel budget had gone and pointing to new arrivals — among them Rivolayeh, Badash and Nasser — as underwhelming compared with players who left over the summer. Some called for academy graduates to be given a chance instead.
Mahfoud's read is more measured. He pointed to concrete, fixable problems: the squad is missing three or four key players, several of those available are short of full fitness, and the club's recruitment has been constrained by budget rather than by Peretz's judgment. In his telling, the team is simply still under construction two matchdays before it matters.
It is not the first time Petah Tikva have looked ragged in August only to find their footing later. Mahfoud drew a direct line to last season, when a similarly shaky start preceded the run that carried Peretz's side up out of the second tier and back into the top flight.
That promotion is precisely why Peretz, 40, is not going anywhere regardless of how the Toto Cup went. The club signed him to a two-year contract extension through the end of the 2027/28 season and raised his salary by roughly a third, cementing him as one of the most sought-after young coaches in Israeli football. It is a vote of confidence the club has shown no sign of walking back.
Mahfoud went further than simple reassurance, using the platform to press a broader argument about how the club should be run: he favors a model in which an incoming investor partners with organized supporters rather than taking sole ownership, arguing that combining financial backing with fan involvement would give Petah Tikva a more sustainable path than relying on one owner's pocket.
For now, the more immediate fix is a football one. Mahfoud believes Petah Tikva remain a stronger outfit than most of what they will face this season, and that one or two league wins — starting away at Ironi Tiberias — would be enough to restore the confidence that four Toto Cup defeats have drained. The opener will be the first real test of whether he is right.
