Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Paulo Sousa's reaction to last night's victory over Bnei Sakhnin was to praise the team's supporters: "Now I can thank them for their support in Frankfurt too"
Last night the final remaining Israeli Premier League sides yet to have suffered a loss so far this season took to the pitch at Bloomfield Stadium. At the end of 90 minutes, only Maccabi Tel Aviv had retained that honour. Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Paulo Sousa summed up the match by turning to the team's supporters: "Tonight we scored four brilliant goals and that's precisely what we're meant to do. We want to share all that excitement with our fans and tonight we shared with them a huge amount of that positive emotion. I wish to thank our supporters, not just for tonight but also for their presence in Frankfurt. I didn't get the chance to thank them then so I'm doing it now. The fans that came to the match, who waited for us at the airport and the pride they showed – it's those fans who give me and all of my assistants that extra motivation to do our jobs".
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Sousa also dealt with a question that is being asked by every sports journalist in Israel at the moment, 'Who can stop Maccabi Tel Aviv?': "Every team in the league can stop Maccabi Tel Aviv, it's not like we're playing in the league all by ourselves, we're playing against clubs that want to win as much as we do and if we don't prepare ourselves for those matches properly we'll be in trouble". As for the team conceding their first league goal of the season, he added: "(Defender Eytan) Tibi was a bit unlucky, that's all, what's important to us and what we want to achieve is to play the best football we possibly can and win every match".
Midfielder Eran Zahavi, whose brace pushed him to the top of the league's goal scorers with five, had this to say at the end of the match: "First of all we're on a good run of form but we have to keep looking ahead and there's a lot we can improve on. I wasn't out there on my own tonight, the whole team gave an excellent performance, we helped one another, we did our job and my scoring two goals, well, that's fantastic but the whole team deserves the credit and we hope to carry on this way. It's up to us to get the points. Next week we have a very difficult match in Beer Sheva and we'll be getting ourselves ready with that in mind. We have a whole week to do it so we'll try to put in the full time. Obviously we'll be out there to win, we've nothing to fear from Beer Sheva, we go to play our game and to try to win it".
Serbian midfielder Nikola Mitrovic, whose goal tonight was not only his first in Israel but one of the goals of the season so far, had this to say after the match: "It's good to score, first of all because it helped the team to win but also because it was a really nice goal. It was important for us to win tonight and to open up a margin at the top of the table, just as it's important for us to win every match. And true, it's a five-point cushion at the top but we have to keep focused on our matches and our team".
