The Yellow-and-Blue Head Coach Slavisa Jokanovic discussed his club’s 2:0 defeat at the hands of Dynamo Kiev on Matchday Two of the Champions League Group Stages at Sammy Ofer Stadium. Maccabi was able to control the tempo of the match for large swathes of time, however they couldn’t find a way past the Ukranian champions ‘keeper Olexandr Shovkovskiy.

Your initial thoughts on the match:

“I am satisfied with our performance today and we improved on the match in Stamford Bridge. We were unlucky at the beginning of the game as they scored a quality goal then and again at the start of the second half. Dynamo Kiev showed that they were a better team than us today and we can continue to improve. We have to live in our real life. We have to be stronger and better in order to defeat a team like Dynamo Kiev.”

On playing in the Champions League:

“We deserve to be here. I understand your frustration and we’re all upset with the result. Zahavi scored a goal that was offside and it was small detail, but we all depend on those small details. I’m very happy that my team is here and we have four more games and 12 points left. If we score or if we don’t score we have to be proud to be here after 11 years. With a bit more power we could be doing an even better job. This is not the end of the campaign and we can still surprise some people just as other teams did so today in other matches.”

Did the team follow the game plan:

“More or less we followed the plan, but they killed us with a very quick goal. We played a quality first half and we played with only one foreign player by the end of the match which was the ‘keeper.”

What do you need to improve:

“We need to improve everything and they were stronger and more physical than us. They were also much faster than us as we didn’t have many chances in the last 20 or so minutes as we didn’t have enough strength left. You have to remember that we were able to get by two quality teams in Viktoria Plzen and Basel. But at this level it’s a different story.”

Are you satisfied with Avi Rikan’s play and can you comment on Eran Zahavi:

“Rikan played against very talented players and he did a good job today. Zahavi did a great job at the beginning of our campaign and he can play in a variety of positions.”