“All for Maccabi. You’ll never walk alone.” Those are the words you sing to us from the stands and let me begin by saying that you turn those words into reality. But more on that later.
Now, I’m sure that all of you, just like us are concentrating on the task at hand – the upcoming match against Maccabi Petach Tikva. For me, it’s a game against the club I grew up with. I began my career there, first with the youth team and my father was the fitness coach with the First Team. It was the club that I broke into professional football with when I played for the First Team. I had a terrific time there but I felt that I needed to continue to advance in my career. But that’s all water under the bridge now and I have one objective on my mind: To collect three points this Saturday.
We’re coming into the game with a nice winning streak but we don’t want to think about that fact especially when we have to play an important match like this one. Stats are good for the media and I’m sure also for you as well. We’re dealing with this game without thinking about our win steak just like when we don’t go into matches depressed when the results aren’t as good.
Since I’ve been with Maccabi every game against Maccabi Petach Tikva hasn’t been easy. We’re aware that we’ve lost enough points at Bloomfield Stadium this season, more than we can afford and now we will make sure that the remaining points stay with us.
We are all aware of the fact that everyone is talking about the fight for first place against Hapoel Beer Sheva and how it’s effecting us. Yes, there are opponents that we are fighting with atop the table and they are also saying that it’s up to them. That’s legitimate. But at the end of the day, if our rivals lose points and we down take advantage of it then it’s not worth anything.
So we aren’t really looking at who is playing first and who is playing second. We are only dealing with ourselves and we’re focusing on our game and how we will play. From my experience, the season is very long and there are still plenty of matches to go and there can be many things that will change over the course of the next few months. So we are not going to look to much further ahead or at the other team’s results but just at ourselves.
For the last two weeks we’ve training under the direction of Peter Bosz, and it’s been very intensive. From both of our points of view the timing wasn’t ideal. There are many things that he wants to work with us on and we have had to make adjustments during the matches. There have already been plenty since he landed here in Israel. I believe that the main change has to be made in our heads and the players have to put the coach’s instructions into action and we don’t have the time and a training camp to practice them all.
The weather forecast for Saturday is calling for lots of rain and wind. We’re all familiar with this, aren’t we? It was amazing to see all of you coming to our last match in Acre, where the weather was not any better. It’s really special to see and feel the support week after week and it doesn’t make a difference what the weather is or where the match is in Israel or around the world, you’re always with us. We are playing at a time where we need to collect as many points as we can and we are happy you are backing us. We want to make you the happiest people in the whole world and we know to do that we have to make sure we get good results.
So Let’s Go! YALLA MACCABI!
