After Last night's draw with Hapoel Beer Sheva, winger Tal Ben Chaim talked to the Maccabi website crew: "Too bad it didn't show in the result"
The stage was ready, a Bloomfield Stadium jam-packed with Maccabi fans shouting their support, something winger Tal Ben Chaim had missed terribly of late: "It was brilliant returning to Bloomfield after such a long time playing home matches in Netanya. Bloomfield is our strength and helps us win home games, whether it's the crowd or the atmosphere or the pitch. After playing on that pitch in Netanya which wasn't as good, and other pitches as well, we're back playing on the best pitch in Israel. It's the only positive to take from tonight's match. Too bad it didn't show in the result, but tomorrow morning we'll wake up for practice and begin to get ready for Maccabi Haifa".
In contrast to the thirteen goals Maccabi scored in the previous four home matches played at Bloomfield, last night things were more difficult; "Beer Sheva made it hard for us, they came for that result and they got it. I think that after the goals they shipped in last year's games at Bloomfield they knew it would be very tough so they tried to close the game down and above all not to concede. I don't think they expected to score and they didn't try very hard either, but that's no excuse. We had enough chances to finish the tie off and if we'd had any luck Eran (Zahavi) would have scored that penalty and we would have won. But things like that happen in football so we'll just have to go into the next match as prepared as we possibly can and forget about tonight".
Ben Chaim isn't discouraged by the fact that this season Maccabi have yet to beat either of their two main title rivals, and he remains fully confident about the rest of the season: "Bottom line, we're still second in the table. We haven't beaten Kiryat Shmona and Beer Sheva yet but we still have three left to play against Kiryat Shmona and two against Beer Sheva. I'm sure we'll get the results we need in those matches".
