Hapoel Beer Sheva defeated Bnei Yehuda 3-2 as Guy Mizrachi scored in overtime to send the southern reds to the Israel State Cup finals where they will meet the winner of the other semifinal clash between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Maccabi Haifa. Ron Kozuk’s team opened the scoring early on as Javon East and Roie Levy both scored within three minutes of each other to give Hapoel Beer Sheva a 2-0 lead by the 12th minute.

However, Eli Levy’s side closed down the Beer Sheva attack from that point on and scored a pair of second half injury time markers via Noam Gissin and Adar Ratner to send the contest into a 30-minute overtime. Beer Sheva took control as the extra session began where Mizrachi took care of a Kings Kangwa assist to take the lead for good in the 100th minute to punch their ticket to the title match.

Beer Sheva Head Coach Ran Kozuk commented on his team’s performance, “When you don’t do things the right way, you have to chase and we were chasing in the final minutes. It’s a lesson for us. At halftime, I said the momentum could shift, and it did and when that happens, things are no longer in your control. We need to understand that when the game is in our hands, we have to keep it there. We talked about this after our last league match and before this game as well.”

Bnei Yehuda bench boss Eli Levy summed up the match, “A missed opportunity. I have a group of real men who are a pleasure to coach day in and day out. I’m sure we had more shots on goal and on target. What matters most to me is that we showed up and delivered a respectable performance, it hurts that it wasn’t enough. If I didn’t believe, I wouldn’t have come here. One of the things we wrote on the board was courage.”

Guy Mizrahi who scored the winning goal also spoke about the game, “I’m in good form. I’m happy the goal went in and that we managed to reach the final. The game wasn’t ideal, we obviously didn’t want it to go to extra time or for key players like Miguel Vitor to get injured but I believe we’ll recover and be ready for Sunday.”

Adar Ratner also shared his thoughts on the match, “Beyond the feeling of a missed opportunity, we choose to look at the positive side. We had a second half where I don’t know how many Premier League teams have come back from a 2-0 deficit. Most importantly, we gained a lot from this game for the future. We’re very disappointed, it was almost ours.”