Maccabi Tel Aviv landed this afternoon (Wednesday) in Armenia ahead of tomorrow’s final Conference League group stage match against Alashkert. After a short rest the team arrived at the Rublican stadium in Yerevan and held their final practice session. This is the second time Maccabi visit the Vazgen Sargsyan stadium as they played Pyunik Yerevan in a Europa League qualifier back in 2018.
At the pre-match press conference, Maccabi’s Head of Football Department, Barak Itzhaki, who will guide the team once again as interim coach, said: “It is true we secured our place in the Playoff” he replied to the question about whether or not he intends to rotate his squad and allow several players some much needed rest: “We will only know tomorrow who will play. Or at least I know but don;t intend to reveal this now is we still have one training session ahead of us. We have a very tight fixture list so maybe we will share the load but this is something I will keep with me until tomorrow”.
While Maccabi missed out on automatic qualification to the round of 16 and now face a match against a bottom of the table side that will not influence the group standing, Itzhaki replied: “There are no easy matches in this competition. We could have faced difficulties from every team in this group. We expected to finish in top spot but sadly we didn’t qualify from the first position. We still have two more games to play, as now we will have to wait and see who is the opponent that we are handed in the draw so hopefully we could advance through to the next phase”.
Maccabi’s 33-year-old midfielder Avi Rikan added about the Armenian side they beat 4-1 at Bloomfield when both teams met earlier this season: “We analysed the opponents and know who we will be facing tomorrow. In the first match we saw Alashkert has a very dangerous striker but we tend to focus on ourselves and try to play our game”.
