After ending a nine-year winless streak against Maccabi Haifa at Kiryat Eliezer Stadium in September, Maccabi Tel Aviv returned to the venue and erased a one-goal Hapoel Haifa advantage with three second half goals to record their seventh win of the Israeli Premier League season
Maccabi Tel Aviv tonight won again at Kiryat Eliezer Stadium in Haifa by handsomely defeating Hapoel Haifa 1-3 in matchweek 10 of the Israeli Premier League. The match opened with consistent Maccabi pressure on the Haifa goal and just past the ten minute mark striker Tal Ben Haim came close with a volley from left of the area off a pass from midfielder Mahran Radi. A quarter of an hour later it was again Ben Haim trying his luck with a curled shot that Haifa's veteran Croatian keeper Kale Dreshler, making his 100th appearance for the club, acrobatically deflected for a corner. The Haifa keeper was equally tested by MTA defender Gal Alberman, whose powerful shot from outside the area Dreshler turned over the bar for yet another Maccabi corner. Just after the half hour mark and against the run of play, the hosts opened the scoring on one of their first forays into the Maccabi area, with Montenegran forward Zarko Korac latching on to a Maccabi deflection in front of goal and kicking it high into the net to put his side 1-0 up. The first half ended with that advantage still in place.
From the very start the second half looked like being a very different story than the first. Five minutes after the restart Maccabi defender Omri Ben Harush got his head to a Mahran Radi corner in the area and powered in his first goal for Maccabi since joining the club last summer to bring the two sides level. But Maccabi were in no mood to settle for a draw and kept the pressure up on the Haifa defence. On 72 minutes, Maccabi's substitute striker Munas Dabbur was felled in the area going for a long ball and fellow striker Barak Itzhaki wasted no time in putting the subsequent penalty into the Haifa net to put his side ahead for the first time in the match 1-2. The pair took turns on 77 and 79 minutes at trying their luck on goal, but without success. That was left to Tal Ben Haim, who three minutes later took a point precision pass from Itzhaki down the left flank and chipped it over Dreshler's head to finalise the result at 1-3. In the last ten minutes of the match, Hapoel Haifa had their coach Shlomi Dora and substitute defender Ahed Azzam sent off, the latter for a second bookable offence.
In matchweek 11 Maccabi Tel Aviv will host high-flying Israel Premier League newcomers Hapoel Ra'anana at Bloomfield Stadium on Monday night December 2nd at 8.50pm.
