The Maccabi players who return to the Round of 32

Maccabi reached the Europa League Round of 32 only once in the past. During the 2013/14 season, Maccabi faced FC Basel for a two legged tie that saw both teams held to a 0-0 draw at Bloomfield and a 3-0 defeat at the St Jacob stadium in Switzerland.

Three players from the current squad were part of the sides which played against Basel in the Round of 32: Sheran Yeini, Eytan Tibi and Tal Ben Chaim.

Three Israeli sides reached the European knockout phase in the past (after the winter break). Hapoel Be’ersheva (2016/17), Maccabi Haifa (2006/07), Hapoel Tel Aviv (2009/10).

Maccabi played 53 times knockout matches I European competition (including preliminary qualifying matches. Maccabi advanced on 33 occasions and were eliminated on 20 others.

Israelis who faced Israeli sides

The Shakhtar Donetsk star, Manor Solomon, is generating a lot of interest as an Israeli player facing an Israeli side. He is not the first Israeli player to face an Israeli side in European competition.

Whilst at Scottish side Celtic, Eyal Berkovic played Hapoel Tel Aviv at Bloomfield stadium in 1999, Elyaniv Barda featured for Belgian side Genk in the Champions League Playoff of 2011 against Maccabi Haifa.

Hapoel Be’ersheva met three Israeli players in 2016/17 and 2017/18 seasons: Amir Agayev

As a Maccabi Petah Tikva player, Manor Solomon played 9 times against Maccabi Tel Aviv as his record shows 1 victory, 2 draws and 6 defeats. In May 2017 Solomon scored a goal as he led Petah Tikva to a 2-1 victory over Maccabi.

On Thursday Maccabi will line-up against Shakhtar Donetsk for the first leg of the Europa League Round of 32.

On paper Maccabi expect a tough and interesting challenge and in order to get some inspiration we returned to some of the club’s historic big games in European competitions.

Champions League history: Maccabi beats Ajax

The amazing 4-3 victory over Paris Saint-Germain

 

 

The drama in Basel

 

On playing at such a level: “This is a dream for every Israeli player, especially for someone like me who grew up at the club. I always wanted to succeed here but also in Europe and we are doing amazing things this season. With regards to Shakhtar, they played one competitive match since their winter break and will play the second match against us. I think this could be an advantage for us, especially as we are enjoying good form lately”.

Could the experience some of the Maccabi players gained, help in anyway? “It is true, we have some very experienced players in our squad both in Maccabi as well as the national teams. We feel confident in ourselves, we feel ready enough and will do everything we possibly can to get a result which would give us a lift ahead of the return leg”.

The Ukrainian side is familiar to the Israeli public in recent years following the success of Manor Solomon, but even before the arrival of the diminutive Israeli, this is a club that is very successful in European competitions. Shakhtar’s record achievement is winning the UEFA Cup in 2009, as other memorable achievements noted were reaching the Champions Quarter Finals in 2010/11 and the Europa League Semi Finals in 2015/16.

Winning the domestic league championship in the last four seasons, Sahkhtar, who are currently second in their table behind Dynamo Kiev, became the dominant force in Ukraine. This season, the side coached by Luis Castro, enjoyed a successful Champions League campaign and finished third in a tough group that included Real Madrid, Borussia Monchengladbach and Inter Milan.

How to deal with a two-month-long winter break?

Historically, the achilles’ heel of teams from North East Europe has been a tough winter which leads to two month long break during the cold months of the year. As a result, and as Shakhtar has been accustomed to, Shakhtar will face Maccabi having played a single competitive match since December. On Sunday, Shakhtar were held to a 0-0 draw in the Ukrainian league by 7^th place Kolos which leaves them with 30 points from 14 matches trailing leaders Dynamo Kiev by 3 points.

Despite the domestic break, Shakhtar kept fit and held a training camp in Turkey and played no less than 7 friendly matches against various European opponents that helped them maintain match fitness.

The preferred system and the quality squad

Historically, Shakhtar have been attracting Brazilian talents before selling them to various European clubs as former players include: Manchester City’s Fernandinho, Willian of Arsenal, Bayern Munich’s Douglas Costa. At the moment, Shakhtar has no fewer than 11 Brazilian players in their squad some of whom are competing with Manor Solomon for playing time.

Portuguese coach Luis Castro continues with Shakhtar’s trademark 4-3-3 formation which features either one or two holding midfielders and an additional midfielder behind the striker.

The Shakhtar squad is packed with quality (Valued on transfermarket at EUR 158M) and traditionally as Castro has plenty of options upfront with a variety of numerous choices. The talented wingers are joined by the attacking full-backs as some leading players are the veterans Marlos, Alan Patrick, Taison and Tete Maccabi will have to watch out for.

One star player who will not face Maccabi is attacking midfielder Victor Kovalenko who joined Italian side Atalanta B.C.

Regardless of Shakhtar’s starting line-up this is a very strong and proven side which would be an extremely difficult challenge for Maccabi.

Maccabi eSports activity continues this evening (Live on Maccabi’s official Youtube channel) as our gaming team expects another entertaining evening.

This time round, our official FIFA Player, Dor Eligula, will face Israeli side Team Finest for an exhibition match which will be played in a best-of-three format (Sony). Finest are in fact the Israeli eSports organization competing at 4 different games with the most popular being FIFA.

A sixth victory in succession

Maccabi’s amazing spell continued yesterday with a 1-0 victory over Hapoel Kfar Sava, which was the champions’ sixth league victory in succession. For the first time since December 2019 Maccabi reaches this landmark.

Maccabi’s longest successful run since 2000 stands on 8 victories in succession (March 2013) and three more runs of 7 wins.

The most one-sided match

Yesterday’s match was the most one-sided match as Kfar Sava ended the match without a single shot on target.

This is the second time this season, together with the match against Kiryat Shmona, where a team fails to find the target during an entire match.

As for the shots on goal, Maccabi held a clear advantage of 22-1 – the highest ratio this season.

Those who led the ‘threats on goal’ chart on the night were the two midfielders: Dor Peretz (7) and Avi Rikan (6).

Dan Biton enjoyed another good game with 5 of 6 accurate key passes.

The statistic which indicates on Maccabi’s free-flowing attacking game is the number of accurate key passes (10) – the largest number of any team this season.

The impressive record at Hamoshava

The victory at Hamoshava stadium stretched Maccabi’s successful run against Kfar Sava to four clean-sheet victories since their return to the top flight last season.

This was also Maccabi’s Sixth victory in succession with a clean sheet at Hamoshava stadium (Maccabi Petah Tikva, Hapoel Ra’anana, Hapoel Kfar Sava, Sektzia Nes Ziona and Bnei Yehuda) – a record for an away team in the league.

Strong at the top

Aleksandar Pesic’s winner was not only his 8^th goal this season but also the eighth goal Maccabi scored from headers this season. Pesic (3), Yonatan Cohen (2), Dor Peretz (1), Louis Hernandez (1) and Etey Shechter (1).

Since scoring 9 headers by MD21 in the 2009/10 season, Maccabi hasn’t scored so many headers until this stage of a season.

Pesic extended the successful run of winning every time he scored a goal – seven matches so far.

Throughout Maccabi’s history, there are 18 players whose goals led to victories in the first seven matches during which they scored.

Tal Ben Chaim who set up last night’s winning goal, assisted for the 19^th time in the league to climb to number 24 in the all-time assist charts.