Hapoel Beer Sheva crushed Maccabi Petach Tikva 5-2 as the southern reds grabbed an early lead to set the tone and cruise to the victory. Dan Biton opened the scoring in the 1st minute of play to give the visitors a quick lead but Anas Mahmid headed home the equalizer just minutes later. However, before the half came to a end Yoni Stoyanov gave Ron Kozuk’s squad a 2-1 lead. Helder Lopes took a Stoyanov ball and put it home in the 51st minute while soon thereafter the same dup combined on setting up Kings Kangwa to give Beer Sheva a 4-1 advantage. Alon Turgeman added yet another marker while Liran Hazan pulled a goal back in injury time as Beer Sheva took the 3-goal win.
“This was one of our best games,” a delighted Kozuk began. “It was important to come in here and show intensity, aggressiveness and passion. I really liked the guys who came on in the second half and they kept the necessary level of intensity. A team that wants to compete at the top needs to have a big and strong squad. We are always looking at how to move forward from where we are and there is still a lot to improve. At the end of the day, in order to be where you want to be, you have to think about the next step. In football, you have to look at tomorrow’s practice, not even at the next game.”
“This game isn’t not going to give me any positive feelings about our play,” Petach Tikva coach Dan Roman said. “Overall the first half was still an even game, but then we just lost our composure. There were a lot of specific mistakes, we played poorly when the game was wide open and this will be a lesson for us. We will have to correct the mistakes and we clearly need to look better on the defense. We need to improve as a team.”
Hapoel Jerusalem downed Ashdod 1-0 thanks to an Omer Agvadish goal in the 13th minute to take the win and the 3-points.
“We have talked about being satisfied with a lot of things that we have been doing but we had not been winning enough games,” Jerusalem bench boss Ziv Arie said. “We didn’t play well, there were a lot of injuries and some of the players are not yet in playing shape. This was the first time we didn’t concede a goal and we had been the only team that hadn’t been able to do so up until this game. I’m thrilled for the guys and I will take the 3-points.”
“I have said before the game that we don’t want to have the same attitude as we had in the last game (a 1:0 loss to Hapoel Haifa),” Ashdod coach Eli Levy said. “But in the first half it was a continuation of the previous match. We didn’t create many situations and it was clear that there was one team on the field.”
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