Maccabi Tel Aviv continues its European journey this evening (Thursday, 18:00 Israel Time) when they visit KF Tirana in Albania for the second leg of Europa League first round qualifying. Just before the match gets started, let’s go back to the first contest’s statistics and take a look at some of the professional pointers that we came across in the 90 minutes of action that occurred last week in Israel.

Attacking defensive backs
Maccabi’s game down the wings was very active as defenders Ofir Davidzada and Eli Dasa caused all kinds of havoc for the Albanian opponent which created many chances for the Yellow & Blue. In contrast to Tirana who played a very defensive style of game, Maccabi’s pair of backs spent most of the match in their opponent’s side of the pitch. That resulted in 10 dangerous offensive actions that were created by the Yellow & Blue, 6 of which ended with the last pass being made from the wings by one of the defenders into the box (as can be seen in the illustrations below).

Davidzada’s new beginning
Let’s continue to analyze Ofir Davidzada’s game. The defender already picked up an assist in his debut and looked very dynamic on the left side for the Yellow & Blue. A glance at the stats page also shows that he had plenty of success in other areas as well. Over the course of 90 minutes, Davidzada made 3 key passes which were all accurate, but not only that, number 27 sent five balls into the box with 3 making their way to their intended targets.

How about Omer Atzily?
There were plenty of interesting statistics from Atzily’s debut as the Club’s new recruit was extremely busy attempting to put 7 balls into the box with four making it to their intended addresses. Number 7 also made two key passes out of three attempts.