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The morning after the 5:1 victory over Maltese side Hibernians, Maccabi Tel Aviv players gave their final thoughts on the two games and on the upcoming third round of UEFA Champions League qualifying matches against Viktoria Plzen in less than a week. 

Eran Zahavi who played for the first time this year and scored a pair of goals was very happy: "We advanced and did it at home but we shouldn't forget that this was only our second official match of the year and as time goes by we will look even better. I love being on the pitch especially when we win. This was my first official game as captain of the club and it's my job to help out the players on the team and I'm happy that I did so."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KDoNKB4_8s

Yuval Shpungin who grew up in the Maccabi youth system was also in the starting lineup for the 5:1 victory over Hibernians and he discussed the pair of games, his personal feelings and the match next Tuesday: "This was not an easy game. We came into the match with a bad result from last week in Malta which put us at a disadvantage. At the end of the day we did what we needed to at Bloomfield to advance to the next round. All of the players would like to be in the starting lineup and give as much as they can to the team and I'm happy I was able to do so. Any time that I'll be playing I will give my best. It's a new year with a new coach and we are all starting from zero. I'm doing everything that I can to show the coach that I belong on the pitch."

TEAM

 The defender continued saying: "It's only the beginning of the year and we will have to keep improving. I'm happy that we moved on, we will look at what we need to work on and move forward to the next set of matches. I'm not going to get involved in if we should bring in new players or not. This team won a Treble last season and we have to do the best that we can. I always do what I can to help the club and of course it helped that I can play next to central

 defender Tal Ben Haim with whom I've played with on the Israel National Team. It's no question that Bloomfield is a huge help to us as it gives us a lot of energy and I'm happy that we won the match and made all of our supporters happy."

Next week's match against Viktoria Plzen won't be easy and Shpungin knows that there is a lot of hard work ahead for the squad. "I don't know what formation we will use against Plzen and that's the job of the coaching staff to decide. We will do our best to stop them. Last year we played with four defenders so this of course is something we are comfortable with. We're very optimistic, we believe in ourselves and we'll keep working on what needs to be fixed."