Eran Zahavi registered this evening another landmark in his illustrious career on Sunday night. The 36-year-old forward reached the 400-career-goal landmark as his second half volley at Doha stadium helped Maccabi to a 3-2 victory over Bnei Sakhnin. At the end of the match, Zahavi, who set up Maccabi’s opener and volleyed home the third to take his tally to 17 goals in all competitions this season, said at the end: “It is an undoubtedly impressive achievement, but the most important thing is that it came with three points.”
Zahavi, who saw his side take a three-goal lead before conceding twice and ending the match with a narrow victory, added: “It is an important victory at a tough ground. It is always tough here and the managed to come back into the game and give us a scare. We played a relatively good game. It is just a shame we conceded and got ourselves under pressure towards the end. But the important thing is that we are leaving here with 3 points, and we could now focus on the task which awaits us on Thursday.”
Zahavi, who already holds the Israeli record for the number of league goals scored in one season (35), and is also Israel’s national team all-time top goal-scorer (34), added: “Throughout my career I have been concentrating on doing my best to help my team. This is my work, to bring the points and the records just follow. You keep updating me every time of another record to break and I just set it as my target. Let me know what is next and we will set as my next target.”
Ahead of the crucial Conference League MD6 match in Serbia against Belgian outfit Gent which would decide the winner of Group B, Zahavi summed up: “On Thursday we have a very important match which would show the team’s character. We would like to win that match as well, but in Gent we face an excellent side. We must be ready to work extremely hard to improve on the things we didn’t do that so we could stand a chance of winning the group. It is not going to be easy but we will be giving everything we have and go for broke.”
