Maccabi “Shachar” Tel Aviv fell to the defending European Champions Chelsea 4:0 in their last home match of the Champions League Youth League Groups Stages. The young Yellow-and-Blue will have one more match at Dynamo Kiev in two weeks. Maccabi had trouble managing with the Blues’ technical abilities and will now turn their sights on this coming domestic league match on Saturday. The coach, Ziv Arie spoke about the match played out:
“In order to surprise Chelsea you have to get them off balance. We wanted to take a 0:0 score into halftime and we kept up with them at the beginning of the match. We weren’t able to handle the ball very well and when you make two mistakes against a team like Chelsea you’re going to end up paying a very high price. As it’s already difficult to play against them, they didn’t need anything extra to punish us. Right now all that’s left is to just enjoy the experience. Our keeper was good and we still gave up four goals, this is the best team in Europe.”
About the team’s performance:
“I’m not disappointed at how we performed. We have an issue that I’ve spoken about many times concerning our attack with very young offensive players. We will continue down our path and I’m fairly certain that we were the only team that’s playing in the Champions League Youth League with such young players. Bottom line is that we should really have more points including the match against Beer Sheva and other clubs that we should have beaten. Little by little we will keep on improving.”
If this match will have effect on Saturday’s game:
“There is absolutely no connection between the two competitions. We are happy playing in both of them and I don’t want to begin making up any excuses. With a little more work on our attack, things will start to get better and better.”
