Saturday’s 2-1 victory over Maccabi Haifa was our 70th league win over the Haifaites as only against Maccabi Netanya we have more victories -71. Haifa on the other hand won 48 matches in the Israeli Classico.
This was not the only statistic recorded during the match. The victory over Haifa stretched Maccabi’s league run against the Haifaites to a solitary defeat in the last 33 encounters. The record in these matches currently stands on 21 Maccabi victories and 11 draws.
Throughout history similar runs in the league occurred only twice as Bnei Sachnin’s 3-1 victory on the opening day of the season was their only win against Maccabi in 34 league matches between 2008-2021. Maccabi Haifa lost only one match to Hapoel Petah Tikva between 1991 and 2003.
Bloomfield stadium also holds an irregular record of results in league matches between the two sides. Since the era of the foreign coaches began at Maccabi in the 2012/13 season, Maccabi hosted Haifa at Bloomfield for 13 league encounters of which 11 ended in victories and 2 were drawn.
Idan Nachmias and Stipe Perica scored the goals on Saturday to take the number of players to score for Maccabi against Haifa in the league to a 100.
The 26-year-old Croatian striker scored a goal in each one of the last three matches played last week (Maccabi Petah Tikva, Alashkert and Maccabi Haifa).
Perica is the 21st Maccabi player in history and the first since Eran Zahavi to do so in 2015. Zahavi scored in the 2-2 Champions League Playoff match against Basel (2-2), against Bnei Sachnin in the league completed a memorable week with a goal against Basel in the return leg at Bloomfield which secured Maccabi’s passage to the Group stages.
Sheran Yeini registered an amazing assist to Perica’s winning goal against Haifa. But this wasn’t the only achievement of the veteran skipper on the night as Yeini made his 493rd appearance for Maccabi in all competitions to equal the record of Avi Nimni who is 4th in the all-time appearance record. As Yeini is approaching the 500 club, he is now 13 appearances short of Benny Tabbak (505) and 25 behind Eli Drix (517) with Miko Belo as holds Maccabi’s all time appearance record with 599.
The 35-year-old skipper also made his 40th league appearance against Maccabi Haifa – a record for any Maccabi player against a specific opponent throughout history. Yeini is 4 matches away from equaling Yaniv Katan’s record of 44 league matches for Maccabi Haifa against Hapoel Tel Aviv.
