The Yellow-and-Blue return to Winner League action on Monday night, 20:30 at Doha Stadium where they will take on Bnei Sakhnin to open up the second round of games on Matchday Fourteen. Avi Rikan, one of the club’s midfielders is getting ready for the return fixtures in the domestic league and talked about what the team needs to do going forward in order to succeed in league play:

“The upcoming league game is what we are focused on right now. We come to every match ready to play and Monday’s game in Sakhnin will be difficult. We will come prepared and do the maximum we can to win.”

What  Maccabi needs to do in order to win:

“We’ve been playing many matches in a short period of time but it’s our job to be ready the way that we need to be and not look at the other team. The teams that we have faced recently are primarily defending so we will have to run a bit more, work harder and be more focussed, organized and accurate in order for us to make sure we take maximum points and win the game.”

What the players have been working on in practice:

“Of course it’s not easy to go from one competition to another as the Champions League required us to play a different style. In the domestic league we have to play much more offensive minded football and that’s what we’ve been working on at training. To play more of an attacking style and closer to the opponents goal as well as to play from the flanks, we will need to get more traffic up front and give our all to get opportunities to score some goal.”

Continuously improving:

“We have to keep plugging away and play our best. Even matches where we didn’t play the best that we could’ve we were still able to take points and that was very important. I’m sure that over the next while we will begin to look even better than we had been during the first round and our confidence will go up.”