Jordi Cruyff, the Yellow & Blue Head Coach addressed the assembled media at the prematch press conference ahead of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Matchday 26 contest against Maccabi Petah Tikva on Monday night, 21:00 at the Netanya Stadium:
“We need to focus on ourselves. It’s an important game and the last game of the second round. If we win, we will be the best team in the second round and then the playoffs begin.”
Everybody against everybody:
“The highest team in the rankings in the one that has the most points. We want to have the most points and we will play the teams twice in the playoffs. It’s everybody against everybody. We have to just think about ourselves and not listen to anyone else. Just focus on ourselves.”
Giving the most effort:
“We will prepare the best way we can. It can never be that another team will have more effort than us. When you play against a bigger team, they always want to play well.”
Preparing for the playoffs:
“I don’t think it’s about moving up, it’s about winning our game, finishing well and to prepare ourselves for the playoff round. No one has grabbed it and that’s why we all have similar amount of points. We want to have a performance like a couple of weeks ago and not like last week.”
Status of Omer Atzily:
“I never discuss the 18 in the press conference. He has trained 12 times with the team and he has looked better. We shall see.”
Point differential at the top of the table:
“I think it’s very tight, but I suppose other years there was more of a gap. There’s not one clear dominant team and we have all taken points from each other. It’s an important game. We know from last night’s result (Beer Sheva’s victory) is that if we win, there will be less than a one game difference from the top of the table.”
Sometimes there are struggles on the attack:
“Many games we played 0:0 we had more than 20 shots and we couldn’t score. We do have the chances and we don’t score when we have to. That’s football.”
Various systems and tactics on the pitch:
“That’s not the system I believe that Maccabi should build on for years to come, but right now it works. When you have a player like Micha you don’t have a system. If you look at the stats you see he’s played almost everywhere. We try to play the most offensive as we can. We are a bit more compact.”
The defensive side of the squad:
“I like to show loyalty to the players. The defenders have only conceded one goal in the last 6 games.”
About Yossi Benayoun:
“I don’t think anyone’s been able to stop Benayoun in his career. Good player. He wants to play and wants to fight. He will try to do the best against us tomorrow.”
Nick Blackman:
“Players feel comfortable playing with Nick, he’s stronger than most of the defenders and the players feel comfortable paying alongside him.”
