After falling to Hapoel Raanana 2:1 at Bloomfield Stadium, Maccabi Tel Aviv’s right back Eli Dasa discussed the match that was, looked forward to the coming week and also gave credit to the wonderful Maccabi supporters:

How do you look back at this match:

“It’s a big disappointment. We didn’t expect this to happen especially at home. These were points for the taking after the Champions League match, but we won’t dwell on the loss for too long. It’s a long season and everything will be ok.”

You played 90 minutes and saw that Maccabi controlled the match:

“Most of the matches at Bloomfield are played in our favor but Raanana closed us down very well. They worked very hard and they deserve the credit for the win.”

There are two big games coming up:

“We come to win every game, but it will be a tough game away at Sammy Ofer against Maccabi Haifa who are off to a poor start. We can’t look back at this loss as we have to go forward and prepare for the Haifa match and then the Champions League game.”

Nevertheless the loss tonight was still a tough pill to swallow:

“We are professionals and have won the championship the past few years, so for sure we are taking this loss hard. We take every point that we can get seriously as these will count later on in the year in April and May. Tomorrow we have to lift our heads and continue on.”

Were you still thinking about Chelsea:

“No, not at all, that definitely wasn’t the problem. We made the switch and you can’t say that the players didn’t want to win. They gave it their all. Sometimes there are games like this where it just doesn’t go your way. If we had scored first the result could have been totally different but there are also games like what we had against Raanana.”

The over 10,000 fans that came out today kept cheering well after the match was over:

“No question, I want to give back to the supporters. They are great. Even when I was with Beitar and I saw what the fans were like against Hibernians of Malta, they have been terrific all year long and we want to make them happy. I’ve got to tip my hat to all of the fans for cheering us on when we win and when we lose.”