Hapoel Haifa and Hapoel Tel Aviv played to an entertaining goalless draw that saw both teams lose a man to a red card as well as some terrific saves by the keepers especially Yoav Gerafi who made a decisive penalty save off of Stav Turiel to ensure that the Carmel reds secured a point.

“I’ll divide the game into two halves,” Hapoel Tel Aviv Head Coach Elyaniv Barda said. “The first half was very poor. We weren’t focused and we still hadn’t come back from Europe mentally, something I was very concerned about. Fortunately, in the second half we managed to get back to ourselves. We won a penalty and I believe that if we had taken the lead, the game would have been ours. After that, we missed chances and then one of our substitutes was sent off. But the things we did came too late and simply weren’t good enough.”

“We could have lost the game and I’m very disappointed,” Hapoel Haifa bench boss Haim Silvas began. “In the first half, we were in complete control, but we lacked that killer instinct. We didn’t start the second half well, Hapoel Tel Aviv came out strong and the red card as well as the penalty also made things difficult for us. I enjoyed watching my team in the first half, but we need to know how to put games away and we didn’t do that enough.”