Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Be'er Sheva are set to begin talks with the Israel Football Association prosecutor, attorney Gilad Bergman, over plea agreements in the disciplinary case stemming from the 2026 State Cup final violence. After a hearing that lasted more than three hours yesterday at the association’s disciplinary tribunal, judge Noam Liubin urged the sides to hold serious negotiations and submit any deal for tribunal approval.
The talks had not taken place before the hearing because the gap between the prosecutor’s demand for substantial punishments and the clubs’ insistence on much lighter sanctions was too wide. Still, the hearing suggested several players may ultimately receive reduced penalties rather than the full punishments sought by the prosecutor.
For Hapoel Be'er Sheva, there appears to be a good chance of lighter punishments for Jebon East and Hamudi Kanaan. During the hearing, Bergman was asked to rank the five Be'er Sheva players facing charges by severity, and he placed East and Kanaan in the lower tier, making reduced plea-bargain penalties likely for both.
On the Maccabi Tel Aviv side, Bergman agreed to combine Christian Bleich’s two-match penalty request for an incident at Turner Stadium in a league match with an eight-match suspension requested for the cup-final events in Teddy Stadium. Even so, Bleich could still receive less than the eight-game ban sought for Teddy, though not by much. Another Maccabi player facing an eight-match suspension is Karwin Andrade, who has not yet arrived in Israel and therefore did not attend the hearing, while Elad Madmon is also expected to benefit from some easing of the prosecutor’s original demand. The assessment is that plea deals can be reached if the clubs accept reduced, but not dramatically reduced, punishments, since both sides understand a tribunal ruling could end up close to what Bergman is requesting.
