Maccabi Tel Aviv's two new signings from this year's January transfer window, striker Barak Badash and defender Remi Mareval, both scored their maiden goals for the club in last night's 0-2 victory over Maccabi Petah Tikva. For the French born Mareval this was his first appearance for the club, while for Badash it was his first start in his new yellow-and-blue kit. At the end of the match, Maccabi head coach Paulo Sousa had this to say about the two players' exceptionally successful starts at the club: ""I'm happy for them, but especially for the team. For them because starting like that, scoring goals that helped the team to perform to get the result we were looking for is something we'd like to see in every game. But again, everything is because the team made sure they had the right attitude and the right behaviour to get that consistency in their minds, to get the right intensity to win matches and today they performed that way and provided the result we're always looking for".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8icP5e5OhM
"The dynamism of the team, also integrating new players in a very short time, performing, getting the result, and getting the number of opportunities we created today, this something fantastic for a coach to see. It's something we've been working on since the beginning of the season. It's difficult to create chances, but it's very important. It's something we keep working on, because you know sometimes when you have tight games creating a number of opportunities is something you need to provide, and we need to score and get the results. Hopefully some of the goals we didn't score today we can score on Thursday against FC Basel. We're talking about two teams who will get another opportunity to play against each another at a different moment with some different players, with a different Basel team than we saw at the beginning. The two games before were tight, with a difference on aggregate of one goal. Hopefully this time we will also make it tight with a difference of one goal, but this time for our side".
Winger Tal Ben Haim, who like defender Carlos Garcia last night received his fifth yellow card and as a result will miss the team's away match against Hapoel Ra'anana, had this to say after the match: "You have to win at venues like this against teams that are out to beat Maccabi and I'm very glad we won. Can't quite put my finger on what was different tonight from when we played them at home, but tonight we managed not to concede like we did at home and I'm glad the game is behind us. We had 29 shots on goal, we were in attacking mode and did our jobs. I want to play in every match, but I didn't play well enough tonight to prove I should be in there against Basel. So far we've only trained for Maccabi Petach Tikva, we knew we had to win here and starting now we can turn our thoughts to Basel. I'm happy for Badash and Mareval, they're good lads and good players and I'm sure they'll make the team even better".
French born defender Remi Mareval, who scored Maccabi's first goal in his maiden appearance for the club, had this to say after the match: "It's my first match, I'm very happy the team won in my first match and I'm very happy to score. I'm very happy to play for Maccabi Tel Aviv because it's very good for me to play in the Europa League and I hope to play against FC Basel. It's a good game and I hope to win".
