Hapoel Jerusalem continued their fine play as they downed Hapoel Tel Aviv 3-1 to remain unbeaten and in second place just behind table leaders Maccabi Haifa. Slovenian front man Alen Ozbolt opened the scoring for Hapoel Tel Aviv in the 22nd minute but the visitors came back with three unanswered goals to sew up the victory. Ofek Biton found the equalizer just four minutes later thanks to a nifty ball from William Togui while Guy Badash put home a spot kick right at the stroke of halftime to take a 2-1 lead into the break. An active Badash then sent a magnificent free kick to Ondrej Baco who headed the ball by the Tel Aviv keeper to hand Jerusalem the points and the win.

“This wasn’t a great game by us ands perhaps the worst of the season,” Jerusalem coach Ziv Arie said despite his side winning the game by a pair of goals. “We came into the game soft and we lost many battles. I said that the fact that we were up 2-1 after the first half someone from above must have been watching over us.”

“I didn’t think this is how my start with the team would look like,” Hapoel Tel Aviv’s new coach Slobodan Drapic said.”We tried to do everything we could over the past two weeks. We gave up easy goals and we were in the lead in a number of games including this one. We had some good minutes and we need to continue to improve.”

Bnei Sakhin blanked Nes Ziona 1-0 as Guy Melamed and Beram Kayal scored the goals to take the points and the victory.

“This was a super important win in our home stadium,” Haim Silvas said. “We knew we had to win. I told Nir that we were lucky and I want to commend them for their performance. But we ended up rightfully winning the game.”

“I can’t criticize the players,” Nir Berkovic said. “They put on a terrific performance against a team with stars and a very good budget and we had countless chances to score. Haim Silvas even said that they were lucky. If my team plays like this every game then not only will we stay in the league but we will be in the championship playoff.”