Maccabi Tel Aviv defender Yoav Ziv, returning from injury in time to play in this evening's derby against Hapoel Tel Aviv, shared his thoughts about the match: "Our job is to play our best, the fans will give us the buzz"
Yesterday afternoon Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Oscar Garcia arrived at the traditional pre-match press conference in the run-up to the all important derby against Hapoel Tel Aviv, tonight at Bloomfield Stadium at 8.50 P.M. He was accompanied by defender Yoav Ziv, kitted out in the Maccabi winter collection blue hoody all the players will be wearing to tonight's match and which will be sold at the Maccabi team shop. "I hope the result will be different than the last time we played them," the head coach said. "If we hadn't missed that penalty I'm sure people would have had very different things to say about the way we played the match."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xgT1DJ9dwQ
The head coach added: "They've added some very good players but at the end of the day it's a question of their eleven against ours and most of the fans will be on our side and that's very important. The players know what to do. I can understand how important it is for the fans that we win this match, it hasn't been easy for us in recent years. I don't think there's much separating the two sides. But like I've been saying at every practice and at every press conference, I'll be looking at the table at the last five or six matches and then we'll see what shape we're in. You'll never hear me saying we're better than a rival club, and that goes not just for Hapoel Tel Aviv but for any side in the league. You win matches by playing better football, not by giving better press conferences."
Defender Yoav Ziv talked about the preparations for the match: "Getting ready for the game is first and foremost a matter of practising our play. Getting ready mentally hasn't been as much on our agenda since the beginning of the year, no great team speeches and the like, just hard professional work. The emotional side we'll get from our fans, I'm sure of that. It's such a pleasure to see them, the support we get from them is such a great feeling. This is a match between sides at the top of the table and that's why those three points are important to us, whether it's a derby or not. True, we had a bit of a dry spell in winning derby matches, but it seems to me that ended at the end of last season and in the Toto league match at the beginning of this season. Now we want to make winning a tradition".
