Champion: The big and surprising star of Hapoel Be'er Sheva
He is not the flashiest star and not a man of numbers, but when the money is on the table, Zahi Ahmed is always there. Nothing came easily to the kid from Abu Snan, and in Be'er Sheva they were not in a hurry to give him the keys, until the connection with Ran Kozuch arrived, who identified something in him that others missed. Since then, he has repaid with a goal in the State Cup final and in the championship game, and now the man for special missions wants to become the hero of the Champions League qualification.
The goals scored by Zahi Ahmed in the last two matches of Hapoel Be'er Sheva in the Champions League qualifiers finally turned the spotlight on him. In a way, it is surprising that this is happening only now. For two years, Ahmed has been one of the most important players in Ran Kozuch's machine: he works without stopping, recovers balls, closes spaces — and above all, shows up in important moments. A winning goal in the State Cup final, a decisive goal in the championship game, and now two critical ones in Europe. He did not always receive credit from the crowd and the media, but from Kozuch he certainly did. And Ahmed repays him, time after time, on the pitch.
Tomorrow Ahmed will celebrate his 25th birthday, and the gift he wants to receive is a ticket to the Champions League playoffs. For this to happen, Be'er Sheva will need to survive the return leg tonight (21:00) against Red Star at the "Marakana" in Belgrade and maintain the 1:0 lead from the first game — an advantage that Ahmed provided with his own feet. Skipping over the Serbian hurdle will place the Israeli champion just two games away from a historic appearance in the league of the big ones.
Ahmed is currently at the peak of his career, but the road there started almost as far as possible from the center stage. He grew up in Abu Snan in the Western Galilee and started playing in two youth departments that have no adult teams at all — Hapoel Mateh Asher and M.C. Ma'iliya — simply because these were the clubs closest to his home. At youth age, he moved to the senior club in the area, Hapoel Acre, and already at the end of his first season there, he made his debut for the adults in the National League. In his third full season in Acre, 2022/23, the breakthrough arrived: Ahmed scored 13 goals, helped the team finish in the upper part, and attracted the attention of Premier League teams.
The most serious of them was Hapoel Be'er Sheva, which in recent years has adopted a policy of locating young players from the second league. Rotem Hatuel, Niv Eliasi, and Yoni Stoyanov are just some of the players who made this path. Be'er Sheva asked to add Ahmed as early as the January 2023 transfer window. Acre demanded the amount set in his contract — 800 thousand shekels — and the "Reds" preferred to wait for the end of the season to reduce the cost of the deal. According to estimates, Acre eventually received about half a million shekels.
However, even after signing with Be'er Sheva, the road to the lineup was not immediate. The club believed he was not yet ripe for the level required from a top team, and the professional staff led by Elyaniv Barda decided to loan him to Sakhnin. Ahmed scored four league goals in the Sakhnin uniform, one of them actually against Be'er Sheva. It was a solid debut season in the Premier League, but not one that immediately made him a player who should receive a significant place in one of the big teams.
In Sakhnin, they wanted him to continue, but exactly that summer a new coach arrived in Be'er Sheva. Kozuch decided upon entering the position to give all squad players a chance, regardless of their status or salary. For Ahmed, this was an excellent chance to prove himself, and no less important — his playing style fit exactly one of the coach's central requirements: hard work. The connection was immediate. While wingers like Hatuel and Antonio Sefer, who were significant under Barda, lost their status, Ahmed received more and more minutes from Kozuch. Already in the coach's first league game in Be'er Sheva, he repaid him with a winning goal in stoppage time.
As the season progressed, Ahmed continued to receive opportunities and repay them mainly with work on the pitch. However, for some of the fans, it was not enough. From an attacking player in Be'er Sheva, they expect first of all numbers, and Ahmed finished that league season with only two goals. In the Cup, however, he provided the moment that defined his season. In the final at Bloomfield against Beitar Jerusalem, he scored the goal that made it 0:2 and secured the title for Be'er Sheva. In retrospect, this was also the beginning of a pattern that has repeated since: Ahmed does not score in bunches, but many of his goals arrive exactly in the games where Be'er Sheva needs them most of all.
Last season, Kozuch's trust in him only grew. Ahmed participated in 32 league games, started in 11 of them, and finished with six goals and three assists. Three of the goals were especially significant. In the first round, he scored a brace in a comeback from 2:0 to 2:4 over Maccabi Netanya. Later came perhaps the most important goal of all — the one that raised Be'er Sheva to 2:3 against Maccabi Tel Aviv in the championship game, on the way to 2:4. Within two years, Ahmed scored in a Cup final and in a game that gave Be'er Sheva a championship. Not many players in the club's history can present two goals of such weight.
In the last two weeks, Ahmed again proved how effective he is in the decisive moments. In the return leg against the Icelandic Vikingur, he scored the first, which balanced the meeting to 1:1 in the summary of the two games, on the way to a 2:0 victory and qualification to the next stage. The promotion also ensured Be'er Sheva an income of at least three million euros and participation in the league stage of one of the European competitions. A week later, a much harder test arrived. Against Red Star Belgrade, Ahmed scored the only goal in the game and gave Be'er Sheva an advantage ahead of the return leg. Even the way the goal arrived tells quite a bit about the reason Kozuch appreciates him so much: high pressure on the defense, ball interception, and perfect finishing.
In fact, measuring the player's contribution only through goals does him an injustice. One of the moves that illustrates this better happened precisely in the return leg against Vikingur. The Icelanders went out for a dangerous counterattack with a numerical advantage, but Ahmed arrived from behind in a sprint and recovered the ball. Conceding at that stage could have greatly complicated Be'er Sheva. Also in the first season game against Beitar Jerusalem last year, he performed a similar sprint backward and prevented Omer Atzili an opportunity to equalize. These are exactly the actions that explain why Kozuch continues to choose him even in periods when his output is not impressive.
At the end of last season, Ahmed marked the next goal. "With God's help, I hope to be a player in the Israel national team," he said in an interview. At the current pace, he will mark a "V" on this goal as well. By the way, Red Star has also proven in recent years that it follows the Israeli market closely. Felicio Milson arrived at it from Maccabi Tel Aviv, Luizao Luiz played at Hapoel Tel Aviv, Mohammed Abu Fani at Maccabi Haifa (via Ferencvaros), and also from Be'er Sheva it has already purchased in the past the goalkeeper Omri Glazer. Another good performance by Ahmed in Belgrade may also enter his name into the notebook of the Serbian giant club.
