{"id":28061,"date":"2008-10-07T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-07T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/maccabi-acquitted-in-the-pnini-affair\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:25:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:25:05","slug":"maccabi-acquitted-in-the-pnini-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/maccabi-acquitted-in-the-pnini-affair\/","title":{"rendered":"Maccabi Acquitted in the Pnini Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\">By Amy Samin<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = \"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office\" \/><o:p><\/o:p><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><o:p><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"><br \/><\/FONT><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\">Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv has been declared innocent of any wrongdoing in the case of the dual contracts of former Hapoel Jerusalem forward Guy Pnini, and the team\u2019s contract with the player has been cancelled.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>In addition, Pnini has been released from his contract with Hapoel Jerusalem; he may play basketball this season, but only in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = \"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags\" \/><st1:place w:st=\"on\">Europe<\/st1:place>.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>Pnini has agreed to give up his salary from his former team, which will not be demanding compensation from whichever team the player joins this season.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>If Pnini does end up signing with a European team, an arbitrator will decide if Hapoel should receive compensation.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv will be able to sign a new contract with Pnini next season.<o:p><\/o:p><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><o:p><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"><br \/><\/FONT><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\">After the verdict was announced, Guy Pnini had this to say, \u201cI am happy this whole saga has ended, and I wish Hapoel Jerusalem the best of luck.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>I will go my way, and they will go theirs.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>I\u2019m just happy I will be able to play basketball.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>I\u2019m a free agent right now.\u201d<o:p><\/o:p><\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><o:p><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"><br \/><\/FONT><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\">Maccabi Chairman of the Board Shimon Mizrahi added, \u201cI\u2019m very happy.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>It has been proven that both Maccabi and Guy had only good intentions, and we had the right to sign that contract.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>You have seen the unseemly behavior of a team that forced the issue and brought about the arbitration.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>A player on the national team was unable to play because of this mess.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>He has been declared to have had the right to be released from his contract, and we have been declared innocent of any wrongdoing.<SPAN style=\"mso-spacerun: yes\"><br \/> <\/SPAN>We have won the right to sign him, and that is what we will do.\u201d<\/FONT><\/SPAN><\/P> <P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt\"><SPAN dir=ltr style=\"FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><o:p><FONT face=\"Times New Roman\"><br \/><\/FONT><\/o:p><\/SPAN><\/P><SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 12pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Batang; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: HE; mso-bidi-language: HE\"><A href=\"mailto:samintranslations@yahoo.com\">samintranslations@yahoo.com<\/A><\/SPAN><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv was found not guilty in the affair of Guy Pnini.  The player\u2019s contract with Hapoel Jerusalem is void; Pnini will be allowed to play only in Europe this season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-28061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28061"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28061\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494713,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28061\/revisions\/494713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28061"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=28061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}