The owner of Polish football club Pogon Szczecin has rejected transfer offers from Israeli club Maccabi Tel Aviv, comparing any deal with the club to doing business with Nazi Germany. Alex Haditaghi, the Iranian-born Canadian entrepreneur who rescued Pogon from bankruptcy in March 2025, published the refusal as an open letter on X, blocking proposed moves for Brazilian left-back Léo Borges and Greek centre-back Dimitris Keramitsis. Their contracts at the club run until 2027 and 2029 respectively, per Anadolu Agency, which first reported the story.
The comparison carries a specific historical charge because Maccabi Tel Aviv has been owned since 2009 by Mitchell Goldhar, a Canadian billionaire whose mother, Sala Goldhar, was a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Thirteen months before this letter appeared, Haditaghi had listed Goldhar by name in a press release as a fellow Canadian sports investor, calling it “an honor to join” their ranks.
From Tehran to Szczecin
Haditaghi arrived in Canada in 1988, at age ten, after his family fled Iran following his father’s death. He and his mother depended on a Toronto food pantry for groceries in those early years. He founded Radius Financial, a mortgage brokerage, in 2001 and spent the following two decades building real estate and financial technology ventures across Canada and internationally.
His path into European football required three attempts. He had twice seen offers for Pogon rejected before a deal cleared in March 2025. The club’s previous owners, a Brazilian investment group led by Nilo Effori, had defaulted on creditor payments and player wages while generating roughly €19 million in annual revenue. Pogon was carrying €14 million in short-term debts and was hours from insolvency when Haditaghi stepped in, according to Inside World Football’s coverage of the last-minute Pogon rescue. He cleared those obligations and became the fourth Canadian to own a top-tier European football club.
Two months later, he filed a press release through GlobeNewswire marking his place in the expanding community of Canadian football ownership in Europe. The announcement named Mitch Goldhar, identified as owner of Maccabi Tel Aviv, as one of the Canadian investors whose company Haditaghi said it was “an honor to join.” That sentence sits in the public archive alongside the letter he sent Goldhar’s club 13 months later.
The club finished ninth in the Ekstraklasa, Poland’s top flight, last season under Danish head coach Thomas Thomasberg. Haditaghi has spoken publicly about integrating Canadian youth into Pogon’s academy, which fields more than 1,400 players, and building a development pathway connecting Canada and central Europe. Transfer income from contracted players accelerates that plan. A bid from a UEFA Europa League side was, by normal commercial logic, an opportunity worth taking.
The Comparison and Its Complications
Haditaghi addressed the letter to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s president and posted it on his X account on June 5, 2026. After thanking the club for its interest in Borges and Keramitsis, he wrote:
Had I been alive during the times of Nazi Germany, one of the darkest chapters of history, I would not have done business with any sports club representing Nazi Germany, a regime that was responsible for mass murder and crimes against millions of innocent people. Today I have to apply the same moral standard.
His stated grounds were what the letter calls “the violent, genocidal and inhuman actions of the Israeli state” against civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. He wrote that his responsibilities extend beyond commercial interests to protecting “values, principles and humanity,” and added that “there are moments when ethics must be stronger than profit and money.”
The comparison lands on a specific person with a specific history. According to Maccabi Tel Aviv’s official ownership profile, Mitchell Goldhar founded SmartCentres, a Canadian real estate company whose assets exceed $9.4 billion, and has owned the Israeli club since August 2009. His mother, Sala Goldhar (née Armal), was a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Goldhar is Jewish. Poland is the country where Pogon Szczecin operates and where Nazi Germany built Auschwitz-Birkenau and several of its largest extermination facilities during the war.
Goldhar had not publicly responded to the letter as of June 6, 2026. Whether UEFA’s disciplinary structures, the Polish Football Association, or any other regulatory body treats the letter as a matter requiring review of club-to-club communications has not been announced.
The Players Who Had No Say
Neither Borges nor Keramitsis has issued any statement. Their agents have not been quoted in any coverage of the letter. They are the two players whose contracts prompted Maccabi’s interest and whose transfer options Haditaghi’s decision has reshaped without their input.
| Léo Borges | Dimitris Keramitsis | |
|---|---|---|
| Nationality | Brazilian | Greek |
| Age (June 2026) | 25 | 21 |
| Position | Left-back | Centre-back |
| At Pogon since | July 2022 | September 2024 |
| Contract expires | June 2027 | 2029 (per Anadolu Agency) |
Borges, full name Leonardo Borges Da Silva, grew up in Pelotas in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul state, came through Internacional’s youth system, spent a loan spell at FC Porto B in Portugal, and joined Pogon on a free transfer in July 2022. He started 30 Ekstraklasa matches in 2024-25 and has been one of the club’s most consistent performers across three seasons. At €1.5 million in estimated market value per Borges’s Transfermarkt profile, he is the more commercially significant of the two in any transfer conversation.
Keramitsis, born in Thessaloniki in July 2004, came through the PAOK youth system, joined AS Roma’s academy, and signed for Pogon on a free transfer in September 2024. He plays as a centre-back and ball-playing defender at 1.93 meters. Football Transfers estimates his market value at between €0.3 million and €0.5 million. A fee at the lower end of that range would still have been meaningful for a club that was clearing €14 million in overdue debts just 15 months ago.
Maccabi’s Year of Fan Bans and Police Interventions
The letter did not arrive in a vacuum. Maccabi Tel Aviv has been caught up in a series of security controversies at European football venues across the past 18 months.
- November 2024, Amsterdam: Maccabi fans chanted anti-Arab slogans, vandalized a taxi, and removed Palestinian flags from private homes before a UEFA Europa League match against Ajax. Violence spread through the Dutch capital in the hours after the game; five people were treated in hospital. Amsterdam City Council subsequently banned the club from the city.
- October-November 2025, Birmingham: West Midlands Police banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a Europa League match at Aston Villa, citing the Amsterdam incidents. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the ban the “wrong decision.” A review by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services in January 2026 found the threat had been overstated and based on inaccurate intelligence.
- November 2025, UEFA petition: More than 70 athletes, including Paul Pogba and Hakim Ziyech, signed a letter to UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin calling for Israel’s suspension from European competition. More than 30 legal experts sent a separate letter making the same demand, citing a UN investigators’ report on Gaza.
UEFA had moved toward an emergency vote on suspending Israel from European competition before the process stalled following a Gaza ceasefire announcement. UEFA vice-president Victor Montagliani said the matter was primarily for UEFA to handle; FIFA president Gianni Infantino said publicly that the federation “cannot solve geopolitical problems.” Neither body has acted.
Maccabi won the Israeli Premier League title in 2025-26. The club said in October 2025 it had been working to “stamp out racism” among the more extreme elements of its fan base and declined to bring any supporters to the Villa Park match even after the police ban was legally challenged.
The Question Football’s Governors Won’t Answer
Haditaghi’s decision is, in legal terms, his to make. No UEFA or FIFA regulation requires a club to negotiate transfers with any specific counterpart. The commercial consequence sits with Pogon’s balance sheet and the two players’ agents, not with any governing body.
The letter’s framing changes the category, though. A club owner invoking Nazi Germany in writing, addressed directly to another club’s president, posted on social media and reported internationally within hours, is a different kind of act from quietly declining a transfer inquiry. England’s Football Association provided a relevant precedent in September 2023, telling English clubs they would still not play Russian sides even after UEFA lifted its blanket suspension on Russian football. In that case, a governing body supplied the rule clubs could not make for themselves. Haditaghi is, instead, a club owner acting where governing bodies have stalled, with no regulatory authority and no legal standing, just a published letter on X.
Whether Poland’s football authority or UEFA’s disciplinary arm decides the letter violated any existing rule on club communications remains an open question. The comparison to Nazi Germany, made in writing and distributed globally, is a record that sits in the system regardless of whether any institution acts on it.
For Borges and Keramitsis, the immediate picture is straightforward. Their contracts keep them in Szczecin through 2027 and 2029. Other clubs can still approach Pogon for either player. How Haditaghi handles the next serious transfer inquiry will be the next test of the framework he set out in the letter. Both players will report for pre-season training in Szczecin in July.
