Ido Shahar made a second half substitute appearance at Turner stadium as he came on at a crucial minute against Hapoel Kiryat Shmona but was unable to help the side avoid the 1-0 defeat. The 23-year-old stepped onto the pitch at Turner seconds before Eran Zahavi had a penalty saved while four minutes later Mohamad Abu Rumi scored the only goal of the game to inflict Maccabi their second league defeat. “We are disappointed we didn’t win” Shahar said at the post match press conference, “But we don’t have too much time to sulk because we have a match on Thursday (Ajax away) and there is a long season ahead of us with many targets both on the league and in Europe.”
“We didn’t want to lose the match. After the victory over Maccabi Haifa we felt that we were in a good momentum and that victory was important. But things like that happen in football. We did everything we could to try win the match and we are sorry for the fans who saw us lose for three matches in succession. I only have good words to say about the fans who travelled all the way to Be’ersheva on a day like this and I am sorry we didn’t win.”
“There are no easy matches” Shahar said, “We tend to look at it on a game by game basis. Now we have Ajax first. You saw that in Europe we come to win every game even when we are facing big opponents. We take the initiative in every game even against opponents that are regarded to be favorites against us. This will not be any different in Holland as we will also travel there with the intention of winning. We placed ourselves in a position where we have plenty of matches to play. This is every player’s dream to participate in such matches and play as many matches in a season.”
