Maccabi lost its first league match of the season going down to defeat to upstart Hapoel Raanana 2:1. While the Yellow-and-Blue dominated the play, they weren’t able to break through the tough visiting defense and couldn’t turn around the match in their favor. Winger Tal Ben Chaim who came on as a second half sub shared his thoughts on the defeat:

“We didn’t play well today and lost the match. Our preparation for the game was good and that wasn’t the problem. We haven’t collected the amount of points we had wanted to by now and I promise you that we will pick up more points over the next four matches. I don’t want to say that we deserved to win and we have to give credit to Raanana. They counteract aimed twice and scored both times. We have to continue to train properly and get into the best possible shape we can for the match against Maccabi Haifa.”

The impact of the European campaign:

“Two years ago we were playing in the Europa League against tough opponents and we knew how to make sure to win our Israeli league matches. Specifically today we just didn’t play well and it has nothing to do with the game last Wednesday. The issues with playing in Europe are the flights, staying in hotels and just the grind that it puts us through, so it doesn’t make a difference if it’s the Champions League or Europa League.”

On the criticism leveled by the coach:

“I’m not going to comment on what the coach said, ask him. You all want to make a symposium about everything he says.”