The Yellow-and-Blue ended the home portion of the Champions League Group Stages against Chelsea going down to defeat 4:0 at Sammy Ofer Stadium on Matchday Five. The coach Slavisa Joaknaovic discussed a number of items including Tal Ben Haim’s red card, the team’s improvement as well as the Champions League experience and playing against the English Champions Chelsea:

About the sending off of Tal Ben Haim:

“It was very complicated for us to play 11 v 11 against Chelsea and to play one man down made things even more complicated. I will not speak about the decision of his sending off.”

On the team’s improvement:

“Yes I have seen improvement. If you’ve seen our first game we’ve improved, they scored three goals at the end off of set pieces today. It’s a tough competition. We need to invest, but our market is very tight with only five foreign players to be more competitive we will need to do more.

The Champions League experience:

“It’s a great experience for me to be in the Champions League. I expect Maccabi Tel Aviv will play better next year in the competition and this is the first year back after 11 years. I’m very proud even though we lost 4:0 as we showed a lot of character and effort.”

Substituting off veteran Gal Alberman and captain Eran Zahavi late in the match:

“They are important players for us. I wanted to give them credit and the game finished a bit before that so I took them off with a few minutes left.”

On not making an earlier substitution:

“I have a good squad and we played a good game on the pitch, it was my decision not to make a substitution until later in the match even though we were a man down.”

Having the opportunity to play a team like Chelsea:

“Chelsea is a strong team on a different level and you can’t compare Chelsea to us. They have a great squad and a great coach and I’m sure they will improve. I was happy to have a chance to test myself and my squad against Chelsea today.”