Moments after the 2:2 away draw at St. Jakob Park, the Maccabi Tel Aviv players couldn't contain their excitement about scoring two away goals with the second coming off a beauty of header by Eran Zahavi in the 96th minute
Next Tuesday's second leg at Bloomfield Stadium will determine who will head to the group stages of the Champions League.
Defender Tal Ben Haim said: "Our game plan worked and we did what we had to do which was to give us an opportunity to advance at Bloomfield in the second leg and I'm happy that we were able to do that."
Ben Haim also spoke about the penalty that was called against him: "The Basel player was able to get in front of me and I didn't see him. I am always my own biggest critic. We knew that we had a goal to achieve and we believed just like we did in Plzen that we could achieve that goal. It certainly won't be easy in the second leg at Bloomfield and we will have to come ready just like we did today."
The defender also spoke about Basel: "They are a very good team. We wanted to be able to make sure that the match at Bloomfield would be our chance to advance and we are happy that we will be able to play at home in front of our supporters in Israel and complete our mission."
Veteran midfielder Gal Alberman also spoke at the end of the match: "We played a very good team game today and we were very prepared to defend for most of the match. We don't have these types of matches in the Israeli league. In these games one has to give a lot of themselves in order to succeed and fight a tremendous amount on the pitch. We didn't have many chances but we did have a few chances to go out on attack with some open spaces. It was a very difficult match but at the end of the day we stood up to the challenge."
Alberman also talked about the return leg: "It was a crazy game, but we have to take into account that the last home game against Plzen was horrible, but in the end we were able to turn around the result in the Czech Republic. We can't dare take our foot off of the gas and try to play for a 'result'. We will have to come prepared just as we were today as our opponent is going to play at a very high level. We saw their pace on the pitch. I think we did great work today and we want to finish the job we started but we also know that it won't be easy."
