The Yellow-and-Blue dropped down to second place following a 0:0 draw on Matchday 31 at Sammy Ofer Stadium in Haifa. Following the Championship playoff clash, Maccabi Tel Aviv’s coach Peter Bosz spoke about the match:
“I saw one attacking team and one that only played defense. Maccabi Haifa had all of their players defending and they worked hard so it’s always difficult to find an opening when the other club didn’t come to play football.”
Moving back to second place:
‘Like I said last week, for me it’s most important to be in first place in Matchday 36. We knew that this was going to be in a tough match and the battle for the title is nowheres near over. I don’t believe that the match between us in two Matchdays will decide the championship. Pressure? No. We’re not under any pressure at all.”
About the effort his players showed this match and against Beitar Jerusalem:
“We knew we would be playing a tough match against a good opponent. You could say they defended with 11 players and didn’t leave a lot of room for us to operate in. If you play in such a small area it looks totally different. We were unable to score an early goal and if we had it would have changed the complexion of the match. Last week we had many chances and that’s the biggest difference.”
Dropping two important points and what impact it will have when they play Hapoel Beer Sheva:
“Beer Sheva plays a more offensive game. If they play defensively against us then that’s fine by me. I said it last week that even though we were in fiery place it didn’t mean anything. We had a good run of wins and we can also take this result. It’s part of the game.”
On changing the style of play:
“I’m not happy with the style of game we played today. I think that if we would’ve scored a goal early the match would have been totally different. I brought on Barak Itzhaki and not Eden Ben Basat because the spaces were tighter. If you don’t have many chances then you have to have a bit of luck wth the ones you do have, today however luck wants on our side.”
