Maccabi’s coach Patrick van Leeuwen spoke after the 2-0 defeat to Hapoel Be’ersheva at Turner.

“We didn’t pay attention at the start of the game and should have been more attentive in the set pieces and in winning the fights if you have to go up” Van Leeuwen said. On the injury of Idan Nachmias who limped off with an injury, Van Leeuwen added: “I didn’t see exactly how the injury to Idan Nachmias happened, but it is obviously not nice if you have a player who is performing well, a new signing who is in good form gets injured in a game like this”.

On Eylon Almog’s late dismissal: “Regarding the red card, I will have to check what happened there, but I think there were too many decisions who were against us. In my opinion the opportunity they had, we should have been awarded a penalty for a handball that was ignored by the VAR. So although we didn’t deserve to win, we didn’t deserve to lose either”.