Maccabi Tel Aviv's youth department has taken on two boys from the 2012 age group, with Liroy Oretzki and Marom Kadosh arriving from Nahalal Yizrael, the young Jezreel Valley club, ahead of the 2026/27 season. According to a report published on Friday by the Hebrew-language outlet ONE, the pair will be registered with the under-14 side — nearim gimel, in Israeli age-grade terms — based at the club's Kiryat Shalom training complex in south Tel Aviv. This is academy recruitment, not a senior transfer: both players are several years away from professional football.
Oretzki is described in the report as a centre-back who can also sit in front of the defence as a holding midfielder, while Kadosh is an out-and-out striker. The two spent last season together in Nahalal Yizrael's under-13 team, which competed in a regional Kids A division alongside the junior sides of Maccabi Tel Aviv North, Maccabi Petah Tikva North and Hapoel Tel Aviv North.
Kadosh's numbers stand out even at this level. The report credits him with 40 per cent of Nahalal Yizrael's goals last season — a striking share for any forward, whatever the age group. He began his football education in Hapoel Gilboa's youth setup, where he spent three consecutive seasons before making the short move across the valley.
Oretzki followed a similar path, joining Nahalal Yizrael after four straight seasons at Hapoel Gilboa. The report describes him as a fixture of the team's defensive spine and notes that he contributed six goals from the back — an unusual return for a player in his position.
Their team's collective record helps explain Maccabi's interest. Nahalal Yizrael finished third in the division with an 81 per cent success rate, conceding just 22 goals — the second-meanest defence in the league behind Maccabi Tel Aviv North, who topped the table at 95 per cent. Those figures come from the report itself; the Israel Football Association's registry could not be independently checked for this age group at the time of writing.
Nahalal Yizrael is a genuine grassroots success story. Relaunched under new ownership in the summer of 2023, on grounds where Maccabi Haifa previously ran youth activity, the club now works with more than 200 children from the Jezreel Valley and beyond, and fields league teams across most junior age groups at the top regional tier.
The move was brokered by Play It, the Israeli agency owned by Oren Sterling, a former Hapoel Haifa youth department director and chief executive, who attended the signing according to the report. Agency involvement in a deal for players this young reflects how early representation now begins in Israeli football's talent pipeline.
For Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose academy at Kiryat Shalom has supplied the first team for decades, the recruitment is routine business with a notable footprint: reaching into a two-year-old valley club for players who impressed against its own northern junior sides. For the two boys, it is the biggest step of their short careers — though at this age, nothing about the path ahead is guaranteed.
