The Yellow-and-Blue right back, Eli Dasa is focussing on the upcoming WINNER League Matchday 25 clash away at Bloomfield Stadium against Bnei Yehuda on Saturday night, 19:30. Number 2 spoke about his importance to the club, playing against defensive minded teams and about the upcoming match:

“We know that Bnei Yehuda is a good team that plays well and has players that can cause us plenty of problems. It’s a very important match for us and we need to take maximum points.”

Last  match against Bnei Yehuda was a home 4:0 win at the Netanya Stadium:

 “We don’t know if it will be similar to last match but we will come prepared exactly the same way as we did last game and I believe that we’ll win the game.”

 The importance of the right back’s role in the upcoming contest:

 “It’s not easy for our whole squad to face a team that plays a defensive type of game, especially against us. As a right back I have a very important role and when the other side closes off the middle of the pitch we have to find a way to help out the attack.”

Playing teams that concentrate on a defensive style game:

“As each year goes by, the teams are learning how to do it better and better. It’s turning into a system that the different coaches practice all week and it’s a certain style of play that they use just against Maccabi. It makes it much more difficult for us to play, but we have to keep working hard and collecting points. We lost a few along the way and it’s natural to lose some over the course of the year, but we have to keep focussing on ourselves.”

There are two matches left  against  Hapoel Beer Sheva:

“Yes there is no question. There’s 6-points left against Hapoel Beer Sheva and we have to win both matches.”

For those that are not familiar with Snapchat, it is a social network platform with a bit of a different twist than those which we are already using. The culture of “SELFIES” has become a mainstay in today’s society and that’s the central theme of the App which is very easy to use on a day to day basis.

We will be primarily using content consisting of “Behind the Scenes” at training sessions, prior to matches and of course special events. In the future we will be able to have activities such as a player taking over the Snapchat account for a day and other amazing programs that will go viral amongst our followers.

Teams such as Juventus, Bayern Munich and Arsenal have just opened their accounts this month and everyone is learning along the way as to how best use this App. As of today only one Maccabi player, Omri Ben Harush has an account and he is also just figuring it out.

Some of the Snapchat’s features are as follows:

• Short term memory: Content that is uploaded can be viewed for only 24 hours after which it’s deleted (The user and followers can save the content by pressing the video button)
• Short videos/pictures: Snapchat videos have a maximum length of 10 seconds and have a slew of features that can make them cool and exciting
• “My Story”: New Snapchat feature that has made the App into a hit. Anything uploaded can be sent to individual followers or en masse and can be added to the other videos/pictures into the “My Story” category
• Sending messages that are erased immediately after it has been seen by the user. (Many places worldwide are using this marketing tool)

The App is being used by youngsters in Israel and is listed on the Top 10 list in Google Play and the AppStore.

Our goals by launching Snapchat are as follows:

1. Enter another new media arena that has already become a hit with a major target audience (youth)
2. To be able to target a very specific audience
3. Adding marketing content through the Official Club Snapchat account in a cool way that will go viral. (Promoting Purim masks, Pop-up shops etc…)

This coming Friday, February 26th Tel Aviv will host the city’s annual Marathon in conjunction with Adidas, one of Maccabi Tel Aviv’s sponsors. On Wednesday, the Maccabi Tel Aviv players visited the special Adidas Facility that was erected at Kikar Rabin (Rabin Square) for the Marathon and participated in some activities that uses the Adidas unique running technologies while enjoying the love showered on them from the crowd onsite.

Avi Rikan, Barak Itzhaki, defender Tal Ben Haim, Predrag Rajikovic, Orlando Sa, Dor Peretz and Gal Alberman were all excited to be at the event and Alberman spoke about Friday’s upcoming marathon: “The amount of runners just keeps increasing year to year. There will be close to 40,000 people who will be taking part in the various races and it’s great to see the whole community come together. It’s a huge honor for Adidas and the city of Tel Aviv.”

On the possibility of running these distances:

“I’ve never taken part in a marathon, so I’m not sure how well I would do. I’m sure it’s another type of challenge. A marathon is a monotonic while football is more dynamic, so you really can’t compare the two. We take part in athletic training sessions with the help of the “Boost Technology” which does a great job for us, so I’m sure it’s also terrific for the runners.”

The midfielder also discussed Maccabi’s current situation in league play:

“The gap is five points and we’re not afraid of the challenge. We’re also not counting on our rivals doing us any favors. There are still going to be two matches against Hapoel Beer Sheva and there are plenty of points still left. Regardless of what will be at the end of the day, it’s still way too early to come to any conclusions.”

Orlando Sa and his Yellow-and-Blue teammates are preparing for their Matchday 25 encounter as they visit Bnei Yehuda at Bloomfield Stadium this Saturday at 19:30. Sa discussed his time in Israel, the Israeli style of football and how he is physically doing after coming back from injury:

“I was injured in the first game I played but Maccabi have very good professionals who helped me with the injury. I’m still not feeling 100% but I am training every day and I’ll be giving me best to help Maccabi.”

Competing against the other teams:

“I see that it’s difficult to score every game especially when teams have 11 players defending behind the ball. Also, every team wants to show a little bit more when they play against Maccabi, so it’s been hard to score. I will try to help and it’s great that the team is doing well and creating opportunities. We are winning but Beer Sheva is too.”

Beautiful and ugly football:

“Yes, I am enjoying my time in Israel. Everything has been great and I’m very happy to be here. Every game is hard and when teams come to play Maccabi they play to counter attack and it’s not easy to play beautiful football. Sometimes you have to play ugly in order to score. I know the fans and media may not like it, but we want to win games. Of course it’s better to play beautiful football but if we need to win ugly we will.”

Coming to play at  Maccabi:

“Jordi  knows me for a number of years and I know that there had been interest before but that’s football. I’m happy that this time it worked out for me to come to Maccabi. It was the best chance to come here and help out to win titles.”

On his role going forward:

“Maccabi has a lot of good quality players and I am working here with my teammates to help the team. I don’t care if I’m in the starting XI or on the bench. All I want to do is help Maccabi win.”

Peter Bosz, Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Dutch boss spoke about the upcoming game against Bnei Yehuda away, although at Bloomfield Stadium this Saturday evening at 19:30. As the regular season draws to an end next Matchday and then heads into the playoff round, the club is focusing on continuing it’s run of good form over the past few weeks and spoke about the time off given to the players:

“I didn’t give them an extra day off. I looked at my schedule and I always give them a certain amount of free time. In my structure I always give 3 days off before the next game. It has nothing to do with the season. I have a set structured schedule for 6 weeks but we don’t always know the schedule in advance. However, since we had back to back Saturday games the past week it was possible this time around.”

About  this week’s opponent:

“Bnei Yehuda is a strong team and won’t give us much room to be with the ball. It will be similar to many of the matches we have played so far.”

Catching Beer Sheva:

“The biggest problem is that we are 5 points behind Beer Sheva. We are winning, but so are they. We will see at the end of the season who is the best and we can only see that after 36 games. Both teams are strong and will fight to the end of the year, it will be exciting for the fans.”

Comparing defending and the defense:

“You defend with whole team, it’s not just the defensive players. You have to differentiate between that and you can’t blame the defense on the last goal in this past week’s game that came off of a corner kick. It was everybody’s responsibility.”

Central defender Tal Ben Haim’s status:

“He’s good enough for Maccabi otherwise he wouldn’t be here. You have to remember that he played the first 6 or 7 games when I got here and then he was injured. Last week he had one group training with the team and it wasn’t enough for me to have him play in the Hapoel Haifa game.”

Player selection for the style of play:

“I decide which players play and it depends on the opponent and how that team will play against us as well. The second part of the last match ended totally different from how we started. We changed what we were doing after 60 minutes and put more offensive players in. We had only two holding midfielders in Nosa Igiebor and Haris Medunjanin on the pitch in order for us to open up the game.”

Impact of the new players who came to the club:

“That’s the reason why the club brought in those players. It was to help out for the last 12 games. They fit into the system and that’s why Jordi brought them in to help win the title and win the cup. Haris has played in all the games and Orlando was injured after the first game but last week he was able to play off the bench.”

Injury status of Omri Ben Harush and Barak Itzhaki:

“We’re not sure if Omri can play yet and he had a knee problem so we will see. Barak will 100% not be able to play.”