Israel blanked Slovakia 1-0 in a friendly match that took place in Debrecen, Hungary which has been operating as the blue-and-white’s home since the outbreak of the war with Hamas on October 7th. After a goalless first half, Ran Ben Shimon’s squad came out of the break on fire and scored the lone goal of the game via Yarden Shua thanks to a perfect Roy Revivo cross to give Israel the 1-0 lead in the 47th minute.

The blue-and-white had defeated Estonia 3-1 earlier in the window to improve their 2026 World Cup record to 2 wins and a loss and moved into second place in Group I. Norway tops the group with 4 wins good for 12 points just ahead of Israel’s 6 points in 3 games while Italy and Estonia are next with 3 points and piece while Moldova is in last with no points to date.

Israel’s next qualifier will be in September at Moldova and then in Debrecen against Italy who fired their head coach Luciano Spalletti this past weekend. In October, the blue-and-white will face Norway and Italy while in November they will end the campaign against Moldova.

The goal scorer Yarden Shua, who plays for Beitar Jerusalem, spoke about the victory following the game, “It’s always fun to score, it’s an exciting position to be in of course especially wearing the national team uniform. It was also a great birthday present. It’s such a different feeling to score for the national team than for your club team. I took the opportunity that I had and I’m happy with what I’m doing and how I am improving.”

Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Roy Revivo who assisted on the goal and is being courted by FC Copenhagen added, “I took control of the ball, I dribbled and that’s how the cross came about. I always believe that it’s possible for us to reach the latter stages of qualifying and there’s something special about this team. It’s been a long year and one that has not been easy, but I’m always happy to play as much as possible. As for my future, my dream is to get to play in Europe and my father and I are working on that. The leagues in Europe are at a much higher level.”

Head Coach Ran Ben Shimon wrapped up the two June games and began by talking about having to play against Slovakia in an empty Debrecen stadium, “We understand the situation that we are in and within that situation we are trying to do our best to achieve our goals. What I’m most pleased with is seeing players like Guy Mizrahi making his debut, getting a chance to really watch Eliel Peretz and see what he has become as well as Stav Lemkin. There are players here who are doing extraordinary.”

As for the game being a friendly, according to the veteran bench boss there are no such things, “On an international level, coming in the summer and also coming in our situation, beating a team like Slovakia that was in the last European Championship, who came with half of their first team and with everyone is playing in Europe, well that’s very nice.”

Ben Shimon was able to play with different formations in order to test things out and used one that included 3 central defenders, “We’ll start thinking again and this will allow us to keep all options open. Football is a sport that is always moving very, very forward and the best reactions that I saw was from the players who played much better for the first time together than I expected, I was very afraid of that. There was a good connection between them and that’s very important going forward.”

Israel used many youngsters in the match against Slovakia which allowed Ben Shimon the opportunity to see some new players as he released many of the veterans after the win over Estonia for various reasons including Manor Solomon’s wedding and Daniel Peretz who was heading to sign with PSV Eindhoven in Holland.

“This is a chance to give me a headache as many more players have now performed well and it gives me even more options. It’s better to have a headache to choose from a multitude of players and I think that competition is the number one parameter for coping in life.”

Ben Shimon also took the opportunity to look ahead to the match against Italy in September, “We don’t know yet what will happen as they will have a new coach by then and they will have one more game ahead of the game with us under that new coach. We will also play Norway and it was clear that they would have a very difficult time in Estonia as they only won 1-0. We saw their celebrations after that win as if they had won the World Cup. I think that makes us appreciate what we did there by winning 3-1 even more.”