Maccabi Haifa have released Matías Nahuel, closing the book on the most expensive transfer in the club's history less than two years after it was made, without it ever delivering the impact it promised, ONE reports.

The Argentine-Spanish forward arrived in Haifa on September 18, 2024, when Maccabi paid a reported €2.5 million to sign him from Śląsk Wrocław — a club-record fee for an Israeli side that had spent big before but never on a single player at that price.

He signed a four-year contract meant to run through the summer of 2028, and he came with genuine pedigree: a Villarreal academy product who had played across Spain's lower divisions and briefly for Olympiacos before finding his best form in Poland's Ekstraklasa with Wrocław, the form that first put him on Israeli scouts' radar.

It never translated at Maccabi. Across roughly a season and a half in the Carmel, Nahuel made about 23 appearances and scored three goals, numbers well short of what a club-record fee was supposed to buy.

Injury compounded the problem. He underwent surgery to repair a torn quadriceps tendon that was expected to keep him out for around four months, a blow that gutted a season already short on end product. "Unfortunately, the injuries did not allow me to show the potential in a giant club like Maccabi Haifa," he wrote on Instagram at the time, thanking supporters while vowing to fight his way back.

He did return, but not to regular football. His playing time shrank further once Barak Bahar took over as head coach, and Nahuel increasingly found himself on the fringes of a matchday squad his fee was supposed to anchor.

In January 2026, Maccabi sent him out on loan to Jagiellonia Białystok in Poland for the rest of the season — in effect an admission that the transfer had already failed and that both club and player needed a change of scenery.

Now, per ONE, Maccabi Haifa have gone further and released Nahuel outright, ending his contract roughly two years before it was due to expire. There is no reported fee recouped and no sale to offset the outlay: the club's record purchase leaves with nothing to show for it beyond three goals and long stretches on the treatment table.

It stands as a cautionary footnote to Maccabi Haifa's transfer business — a reminder of how quickly a marquee signing can turn into dead weight on the wage bill when injuries and form conspire against a player at the same time.