Hapoel Beer Sheva advanced to the UEFA Champions League Playoff Round where they will play Sabah from Azerbaijan after soundly defeating Red Star Belgrade 3-0 on aggregate. The southern reds will be hosting the first leg next Wednesday in Bucharest, Romania while the return leg will be played in Baku the next Tuesday.

Ran Kozuk shared his feelings after advancing to the playoff round, “I have an incredible sense of pride in our players. Beyond the fact that we advanced, to do it in this manner after two matches, both at home and especially here in a difficult stadium and to play the football we played, I’m proud of them.”

“Prior to the game, Eliel Peretz said something before we put our hands together: ‘If something happens, react.’ I thought that was amazing, because I knew things would happen during the game and the reaction was very important to me. We talked about the reaction, because the reaction is to play Hapoel Beer Sheva’s football: to keep moving the ball even under pressure, even when the opponent presses and to keep pressing high. I think they did it big time. Every time things got a little difficult, we calmed the game down, started playing our football and you saw the result. I think it could have been even more than 2–0, but I’m not greedy.”

With two games in four days with the Toto Cup and Champions League qualifying, Kozuk has to prepare properly in order to make sure that his team is ready to go, “When a team is ambitious and we are an ambitious team, on the one hand, there’s a lot of good that comes with that, but on the other hand, we need to show a lot of responsibility toward the competitions we’re participating in. We’ll also need to put a lot of emphasis on the Toto Cup.”