Eran Zahavi who was denied by the post and didn’t manage to add to his 10 goals scored this season as Maccabi were held to a 1-1 draw by Maccabi Bnei Reineh at Bloomfield said at the end of the game: “We played a game here which was packed with emotions, time wasting, small fouls which saw the opponents go to the ground and sometimes you shouldn’t make it legitimate. But I am not pointing a finger and blaming Bnei Reineh as they battled hard and did their job. It is not simple to come here to Bloomfield, we will not sulk and complain but will take responsibility for our actions.”
On what was missing on the night to win the match, Zahavi added: “We should have kept a clean sheet and failed to do so. Conceding an advantage due to a lapse in concentration and we found ourselves chasing a game instead of making it easy for ourselves. We are looking forward and we know we will not win all the matches this season but I hope we will win more matches than everyone else.”
The 36-year-old who one of the most experienced players in the team and the league, kept his feet on the ground as he summed up: “The league is a marathon and we must play against everyone as all the teams will come out here and we will travel to play them at their home ground. We can’t win every game. We came back after the international break and didn’t spend a lot of time together. We will now go back to basics, connect once again and everything will be as it should be. On Thursday we host our first match in the Group stage and we would like to do our job. What happened here tonight is already over and we are looking ahead for Thursday.”