The last time Maccabi Haifa and Maccabi Tel Aviv met, the Yellow & Blue walked out of Sammy Ofer Stadium with a 3:1 win. Just ahead of tonight’s Round of 16 match in Haifa at 21:00, let’s look back at some of the most interesting statistics from that meeting.
Haifa’s right wing
In the last match, Maccabi was much more dangerous than Haifa over the course of 90 minutes as Jordi Cruyff’s squad had 21 attempts towards the Green’s goal compared to 9 by the host’s. Despite that, Haifa’s right side was very active and that can be seen from the statistics as it gave the Greens their most dangerous opportunities.
Right back Raz Meir, who played in place of Ernest Mabouka. You can see from the diagram that Meir (#25) played much further up than say for example left back Yonatan Levi. Meir sent the most balls into the attacking third and also made 3 dribbles which were all successful.
Sintayehu Sallalich (#7) played with Meir on the right and attempted to put the most balls into the box with 2 of four being accurate plus two key passes with both hitting their intended targets. The combination of the two gave Haifa 5 of their 7 attempts on goal none of which came on set pieces but an attack down the right flank. There was one down the middle and one from the left side as well.
Caio loves to shoot
Just recently, the Brazilian midfielder Caio has been given a spot in Haifa’s Starting XI. In the match against Maccabi, Caio had the most shots with 3 towards the target, which was a third of the Green’s attempts. This shouldn’t come as a surprise as Caio averages 2.8 shots per match with 1.0 on target. Next in line is Nikita Rukavytsya and Mohammed Awaed with 1.7 each towards the goal. On the other side of the coin, Caio leads the team with 2 turnovers on his side of the pitch.
It is worth crossing the ball into the box?
We’ve already looked at how Haifa’s defense has seen better days, but how much does that concern the aerial battles from last match? With Rami Geshon and Allyson Aires dos Santos anchoring the back line the former won 3 of 4 battles while the latter was successful in 5 out of 6. In fact, right back Raz Meir was also 2 for 2 and left back Yonatan Levi went 2/4 therefore this may not be the style of game Maccabi will want to play this evening.
