From 29/09/15 when Dynamo Kiev came to Israel to play in Maccabi’s first home game up until the last match against Chelsea on 24/11/15, for a total of 57 days, the Ukrainian and English Champions along with Porto the runner up on the Portuguese league all visited the Holy Land. The games took place at Sammy Ofer Stadium with a seating capacity of 30,870. For the Kiev match 27,117 fans attended including 1,486 that came to support the Ukrainian Champs. The Chelsea match was attended by 27,114 fans of which 976 rooted for the Blues. Porto drew 26,768 fans with 96 cheering on the Dragons.

The Father, the son and the best player

Maccabi was unable to pick up any points at home but here’s some interesting facts about the clubs that they played. Let’s start with the players, as there where plenty of them that graced the Sammy Ofer pitch. The oldest player to face the Yellow-and-Blue was Kiev keeper Oleksandr Shovkovskiy who played his entire career for the side beginning in 1993 and is one of the club’s most famous players and icons.

On the other side of the coin, there were plenty of players who hadn’t reached the stars yet and in some cases hadn’t even been born when Shovkovskiy made his debut. The youngest player who plied his trade at Sammy Ofer was Ruben Neves, the 18 year old Portuguese midfielder who was born on 13/03/1997! His age didn’t seem to bother Porto’s coach Julen Lopetegui too much as the Spanish boss gave him the captain’s arm band for the match against Maccabi. Lopetegui has had plenty of good luck with youngsters in Israel as he guided Spain’s Under-21 side to the 2013 European Championship at Teddy Stadium.

 Just a bit older than Neves was the Yellow-and-Blue midfielder Dor Peretz who at 20 years of age played in the club’s home matches. Chelsea also had a pair of 21 year olds in Kurt Zouma and Baba Rahman who helped the Blues to victory in Israel.

Once we’re onto the subject of stars who was the most decorated player who played against coach Slavisa Jokanovic’s squad?

The competition was not easy but it did have a scent of Spain with some players having won their domestic league and Champions League in the past but also have won international tournaments such as the European Championship and World Cup. Cesc Fabregas and Pedro are two who have collected these major titles. Let’s begin with the midfielder. When Cesc was with the Gunners he was unable to capture the Premier League but in 2008 and 2012 he won the European Championship. He also picked up the World Cup trophy in 2010 and won domestic league championships with the Blues and Barcelona.

Once we’re on the topic of Barcelona, Pedro who played in the second half of the match against Maccabi has won 5 La Liga Titles for Barca, three Champions League trophies which is something that Cesc hasn’t done yet. You can add a World Cup and one European Championship and you’ve got one great head to head battle between the two players. But when two are fighting, Iker wins.

The Spanish keeper, who is thought to be one of the greatest at his position, has won 5 Spanish League championships along with helping the Los Blancos to three Champions League titles and was also the captain of Spain when they won the 2010 World Cup and one of their European Championships. There’s no doubt he’s the biggest winner of the three players and the most decorated who played against Maccabi.

Unfortunately, the Yellow-and-Blue gave up plenty of goals during the three home matches. No one scored more than one goal at Sammy Ofer but there were three Brazilians who did find the back of the goal. Junior Moraes, Oscar and Willian all scored against Predrag Rajkovic in Haifa. The players that had the most shots on goal against Maccabi was Porto’s Aboubakar and Chelsea’s Diego Costa with six attempts a piece.

There were also a ton of kilometers that were clocked on the Sammy Ofer pitch. Which team ran the most? The Dynamo Kiev players ran a total of 110,189km, in second place was Porto with 102,357km and Chelsea in third having run 100,465km.

Maccabi Tel Aviv fell to the Premier League Champions 4:0 at Sammy Ofer Stadium in Haifa in front of a packed house. Omri Ben Harush, the Yellow-and-Blue left back spoke about the team’s Matchday Five clash against Chelsea that still left Maccabi looking for a point in the Champions League Group Stages:

“Thanks, we all worked hard and played throughout the match. The result wasn’t in our favor but we will keep, learning from these experiences as we continue on year to year.

On the club’s improvement:

“I think every match makes us a bit better at this level of play. We have to keep playing these type of games and we will continue to get better. We played better in this match than in the last ones and you could see that. This time we were able to look them in the eye but the results still need to improve. We were hoping to do better.”

The result wasn’t indicative of the match:

“I think that we could have had a couple of chances to score and if we did the result may have been different.”

About the level of play:

“It may have been that we were able to start out strong but weren’t used to the tempo of this level. We had some quality chances at the beginning of the first and second halves and we need to find a way to take advantage of these situations and push forward.”

On playing Chelsea a second time:

“I think that we came into this match with a totally different attitude. Matchday One was our first Champions League match and it was in Stamford Bridge and we were all very excited from the whole experience. As the competition continued we began moving the ball better and opened up our game for more chances, but it’s too bad we didn’t take advantage of them.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv midfielder Avi Rikan began the match against Chelsea in the midfield and ended it as a left back due to Tal Ben Haim’s sending off in the first half. Despite the loss, Maccabi is confident that they’ve been improving throughout the competition as the club continues to aim higher and higher:

“We really wanted to score and do something in this game, but it didn’t work out. We were beaten on a bunch of set pieces, what can you do. We weren’t very happy about the performance for the fans who came out and cheered us on the whole night through. It’s not so simple to support us the way they have been doing due to our results, so I especially want to thank them for their efforts and support.”

On improving throughout the Champions League:

“As every match goes by we feel that we’ve learned something and that we’ve improved. Again, in the case of this game we gave up a bunch of goals and didn’t score any ourselves. But there were times on the pitch during the match where we had a number of chances, however, the way we gave up some really frustrating goals on set pieces didn’t help our cause.”

Battling with Chelsea toe-to-toe:

“We did stand up to them but it wasn’t easy. These guys are the top players in the world. This campaign was a chance for us all to learn about what it takes to play in this type of competition.”