Eran Zahavi struck the woodwork twice but couldn’t add to his goal tally and was left frustrated as Maccabi dropped two valuable points after being held to a 0-0 draw by Hapoel Petah Tikva.
At the end of the match at the Petah Tikva stadium, Zahavi said: “We had plenty of chances to score and if the game would have ended 5-0 it would have seemed normal. The ball simply refused to get in as it was one of these days that even if the ball beats the keeper, it hits the post, or blocked by a player on the goal-line. It was just unlucky, but I believe that if we continue creating chances like that, we will win matches and collect points. We did not do it in this game but will try and restore it at the next game.”
The fourth draw of the season took Maccabi’s point-tally to 43 cutting the lead at the top from second place to a solitary point. “There is no cruising towards the championship. It is a marathon. Every team has its ups and downs during a season. Maccabi Haifa had a bad spell, now we are experiencing a spell where we are not collecting the number of points we are used to, so the gap naturally shrinks. But even when we had a 10-point-lead we knew we will have a period where it wouldn’t work as well especially with this overload of matches. Now we must show our character and prove our strength as a team. I am sure we will manage to overcome this short spell and continue running forward”.
On what hasn’t been working lately, Zahavi added: “The ball just didn’t go in. We created a lot of chances over the past few games, we were got ourselves under pressure in the last minutes, we found ourselves chasing some games“ he tried explaining but remained confident, “Once again, we are not letting g our heads drop, it is a spell we will go through together and emerge stronger. We are not here to make apologies, we are still at the top of the table – it is still a marathon and everything will be ok”.
