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Maccabi Tel Aviv awoke this morning with mixed feelings after the team relinquished a 2-0 lead in their home match against Maccabi Petach Tikva to draw 2-2. After the match, Maccabi Tel Aviv head coach Paulo Sousa said: "We had a lot of opportunities to score but in the end they scored as many as we did. The hard part is creating those chances, and that we did, we just have to make sure that it's enough to win the match". As for the defensive effort he said: "I don't distinguish between my defensive and my attacking players, when we win we all win and when we lose we all lose. The result is really my fault because the team in part of the second half was not consistent". As for the upcoming international break he added: "This will be a good opportunity for us to work on our mental and physical stamina, we have a lot of very important matches ahead of us and we'll want to make sure that we're competitive and can win those matches". When asked about his goalkeeper Juan Pablo, he said: "Juan Pablo, Barak Levi and Tomer Chencinski are the best goalkeepers in Israel".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0ckBOCmKDc&feature=youtu.be

Striker Rade Prica, who drew the penalty and had an assist in the second goal, said: "We went ahead by two goals and the match looked done and dusted but they managed to reply with two of their own and that's what's great about football. We created a lot of chances and should have finished off the match long before that but sometimes the ball just doesn't seem to want to go in. We were the better team and should have won. We'll all have to play better. I haven't been scoring recently and I'm looking forward to scoring soon just to release the pressure".

Defender Reef Peretz, who came on as a substitute to make his first appearance since the final match of last season, said: "These things happen, it's part of the game. We'll have to correct those mistakes for the next time and deal with it. It's disappointing because we were up by two goals, but we're a strong enough team to handle situations like these". As for the team's defence he said: "We have an outstanding defensive line, if it was good enough to keep seven straight clean sheets at the beginning of the season, it's good enough now. We're all one team, on defence and in attack".

International play this week-end means Maccabi Tel Aviv will have a break from league duties, but they will return the following week when they play away to Hapoel Haifa in matchweek 10 of the Israeli Premier league.