After winning their first championship in 1971, the club's golden period lasted until the late 80s, including four more league titles and a double in 1978.

Maccabi Netanya Football Club was founded in 1934 and initially played in green and white stripes.

The club played their first game against Beitar Netanya in 1935 at the Maccabi stadium, which was located in the center of the city.

During the early to mid 1940s, a number of British players who served in military bases near Netanya played for the club.

During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, four of the club's players were killed – Israel Arbaitman, Yehuda Blecher, Haim Goldstein, David Liebster and coach Baruch Feuer.

After the third-placed finish in 1968–69, the 1970–71 season saw Netanya win their first title by a margin of eleven points, back then the largest in Israeli football history.

They won a third title in 1977–78, and completed the double by beating Bnei Yehuda 2–1 in the State Cup final.

In December 2005 Daniel Jammer, a Jewish German businessman bought the club for a fee of $1,500,000.

Although the club led the league in the early part of the 2008–09 season, they eventually finished fourth and Matthäus was sacked and replaced by Nati Azaria.

Netanya made an immediate return to the top division after finishing as the champions of Liga Leumuit in the 2013–14 season, a season in which they also reached the State Cup final, losing 1–0 to Ironi Kiryat Shmona in front of more than 22,000 supporters of Netanya.

At the start of the season five players got severely injured (including the main goalscorer and captain Eran Levy) which caused for many problems.

Guy Tzarfati was called up to be the caretaker manager and after he lost a State Cup game against Sektzia Nes Tziona of the third division he was sacked and was replaced by Meni Koretski who could not save the sinking ship.

[8] In June 2016 Eyal Segal (a known die hard supporter of Maccabi Netanya) took over as the new owner of the club and declared the goal is to get promoted at the end of the season.

[9] The club started the 2016-17 season with a deduction of 9 points, but still managed to do the unthinkable as they got promoted back to the top flight of Israeli football as the Leumit champions.

The first game took place in Tubruk Stadium with 9,000 people in attendance, Yigal Menahem scored the only goal for Maccabi.

There's also a strong rivalry between Netanya and Hapoel Kfar Saba, games between the two are often called "Derby HaSharon" because the two clubs are known to be the major teams from the Sharon plain.