The Head of Football Department who is acting as an interim coach, faced the media after the 1-1 draw against Nof Hagalil at Bloomfield stadium.
“the second half wasn’t good, not the first one was great but our mistake was that we dragged into playing at their tempo which is a shame” Itzhaki said, “It wasn’t a good game, we didn’t deserve to win this match and if we want to win games we must play at a higher tempo and with a lot more passion. Matches like that are not acceptable especially not by me”.
When asked how he intends to deal with it, Itzhaki replied: “There is one way to tackle this situation and that is by continuing to work hard. It might sound like a cliche or a slogan but if we want to improve and if we want to do something with this season – we must work hard and play much better than the way we played today. We are not experiencing a good spell, from the start of the season we are not getting results or playing the football expected from a club like Maccabi Tel Aviv. I honestly believe that there are good players here and it should click. If we don’t continue to work it will continue to look like it did today”.
When asked whether Maccabi allegedly lost some of its’ spirit, he clarified: “There is a really strong club here. Covering this club for so many years, you know it as much as I do. We didn’t have a good start to the season, and we are not hiding from that. The coaching staff and the players together are those who should work together in order to get us out of this position. If we won’t then it will not happen. This club is very strong, and we must remain united especially at difficult times like this because strong characters rise to the occasion in difficult times. When everything is working well it is easy. I expect first from myself, from the players, and people around the club to support the team because we are measured at tough times. We must remain united”.
As for the decisions he took before and during the game, he replied: “When the game is played like that one can talk about the substitutions. I might have made mistakes, but this is what I saw right in terms of the situation as it it a petty we couldn’t score as I introduced all our attacking tools”.
On the squad he has at his disposal and the building process in assembling this group of players: “I think there is a good group of players here, but the team and it’s qualities doesn’t match our position in the table”.
