Trailing 2-0 after just over twenty minutes, Maccabi Tel Aviv responded with three second half goals to win their third consecutive Tel Aviv Derby of the 2012/13 season
In the penultimate match of the 2012/13 Israeli Premier League season, freshly crowned champions Maccabi Tel Aviv came to Bloomfield Stadium as guests of arch city rivals Hapoel Tel Aviv, and after 95 minutes of eventful play and a spectacular comeback celebrated a 2-4 victory, their third consecutive Derby triumph of the 2012/13 season. With nothing riding on the match in terms of the league standings, the game was all about bragging rights and it was host Hapoel who celebrated the first joy early on, twice in fact, to take a 2-0 lead. But by halfway through the second half the visiting Maccabi Tel Aviv side had already equalised at 2-2. And what appeared momentarily as a stalemate lasted but a quarter of an hour, as Maccabi substitute striker Roberto Colautti's clever shot made it 2-3 before midfielder Dor Micha added a brilliantly placed 4th on the final play of the match.
The first twenty minutes of the match belonged to the host Hapoel Tel Aviv, and with just twelve minutes gone striker Tal Ben Haim stayed onside taking a pass threaded through the Maccabi defence and shot past onrushing Maccabi keeper Vincent Enyeama to give his side a 1-0 lead. Ten minutes later they doubled that advantage after referee Liran Liani determined a Hapoel attacker had had his shirt grabbed during a corner into the area and Hapoel's Cameroonian born keeper Apoula Edel dispatched the resulting penalty with aplomb. The next twenty minutes of the match passed without incident, but two minutes before the break Maccabi midfielder Moshe Lugassi was brought down in the area and fellow midfielder Eran Zehavi stepped up to the spot to score his eighth goal of the season and his second in Derby play. 2-1 to Hapoel at half time.
After the restart it was clear that the momentum had shifted to the Yellow half of the pitch but captain Sheran Yeini's early shot from a deflection in the box flew over the opposition goal. Apart from Enyeami's leaping save of a header from Hapoel defender Walid Badir the attacks all came from the Maccabi side. After 68 minutes the pressure bore fruit as midfielder Maharan Radi fired a perfect curling free kick from outside the area past keeper Edel. Like Zahavi it was Radi's eighth goal of the season and second in a Derby and it levelled the match at 2-2. And so it stayed until the 83rd minute when Maccabi substitute Colautti, with his first touch of the game, took a clever pass into the area from midfielder Gonzalo Garcia and dinked it past the Hapoel keeper to give his side a 2-3 lead. And on the last play of the game, five minutes into injury time, Maccabi's young midfielder Dor Micha caught the Hapoel keeper unawares with a brilliantly placed fourth at the near post to leave in absolutely no doubt who were the winners on the night.
The Maccabi win puts the two Tel Aviv rivals on historically equal terms with 45 post independence Derby victories each. Maccabi Tel Aviv's last match of the season will be a "little" derby against city neighbours Bnei Yehuda in a home match at Bloomfield Stadium next Monday night, May 20th, at 8.50 P.M.
