Dor Peretz captained Maccabi on miserable night that saw his side suffer its’ third league of the season losing 1-0 to Maccabi Bnei Reineh at Bloomfield. Prior to kickoff, the club removed the shirt of Omer Shem Tov who returned from captivity after 505 days in Gaza as well as a minute of silence in memory of the four hostages (Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz). “This was the most important thing here today” Peretz said after the match. “We are playing football and try to win titles, fighting for them on the pitch while there are other people fighting for their lives and still battling. The most important thing is for them to return with god’s will as soon as possible.”
On the disappointing defeat to Bnei Reineh, Maccabi’s third of the season, Peretz said: “We didn’t expect to drop points here tonight. It is disappointing but we will have to raise our heads and move on.”
When asked about the team conceding goals early in the game, he replied: “It is true, we are all seeing the same Maccabi, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. We tend to concede too many unnecessary goals which is everyone’s responsibility and not a specific player. Sometimes it works and we bounce back and sometimes it doesn’t which is the problem.”
On the refereeing display that saw Orel Grinfeeld allow a controversial goal and deny Maccabi several penalties, Peretz said: “In my opinion besides the penalty which was a 100%, the rest of the referee decisions were good and he had a good game. A penalty decision can change the course of a game. I don’t want for a team like us to deal with referees in every game. It is not relevant to us. I want the decisions taken to be correct and if not then for someone who needs to correct them to deal with it. I would like to win with our form.”
Peretz then summed up and said: “We will analyze today’s match and understand what we did wrong, Next week we have a similar match against a side that also sits back so we will need to learn from these matches. We will move on now as this is Maccabi Tel Aviv – no spare moment to stay behind.”
