Maccabi Tel Aviv’s continued successes reached nine consecutive matches without conceding a goal after Saturday’s 2-0 win over Hapoel Ra’anana and the club now sits atop the TASE Premier League standings with a six-point lead.
Goalkeeper Daniel Tenenbaum already set a new record for clean sheets after last week’s 2-0 home win over Hapoel Beersheba, but another mark was equalled on Saturday, as with the final match of last season, a 4-0 win over Beersheba, Maccabi have already reached 10 matches without conceding a goal and have equalled the record held solely by Maccabi Haifa which they set in 1988-89.
Next up for Maccabi will be Hapoel Haifa at Bloomfield on Saturday and if the boys in yellow manage to shut down their goal, they will set an all-time mark.
Another achievement of note set on Saturday was that Maccabi have now registered the most away wins by any Israeli club without conceding a goal since the start of a season.
As of today, Maccabi are the only first division club in any European league not to have conceded a goal. Second are Karabakh of Azerbaijan who have conceded twice in 10 matches followed by Olympiakos of Athens with three goals in nine, Benfica Lisbon (3 in 10) and Slavia Prague (3 in 15).
Another factoid that will be of interest to Maccabi fans is that Reims of France, coached by former Maccabi boss Predrag Raijkovic, lead the same category among the top five European leagues (England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France). They have conceded four goals in 11 league fixtures.
As for individual records, Jair Amador continued his excellent start to the season and dispossessed opponents nine times during Saturday’s match. Eyal Golasa’s aggressive play as he made a comeback from injury after a year on the sidelines, also contributed to the win and won the ball in 10 of the 16 clashes he was involved in. Dan Glazer, who is having a great season too, created the assist for Chico Ofouedo’s goal, his second of the season, while Ofouedo himself, scored for the fourth time in his last five outings and he is the club’s leading goal scorer.
Yonatan Cohen, who scored the second goal on Saturday, registered his second strike of the season.
