1) The Israel National Football Team fell to Northern Ireland 3:0 in a friendly in Belfast. The Blue & White looked totally out of sync as they barely mustered a chance or two in a game in which they were badly outplayed. Upon their arrival back in Israel, Head Coach Andi Herzog spoke about the defeat to Northern Ireland and the UEFA Nations League loss at Albania on Friday night, “I’m in charge and I take all the responsibility. You always have to look for some positives to give the players a feeling that you believe in their qualities. Maybe we need more players up front to create more chances. We have to analyze everything and find the right formation to beat Albania and Scotland. We have a couple of weeks and hopefully everyone will come back in better shape. We couldn’t match the intensity of Northern Ireland in the second half due to fitness.”

2) The Israel National Basketball Team hosts Georgia in Thursday night in World Cup qualifying. The final 12 man squad was named after a number of players were released due to injury including John Dibartolomeo, Rafi Menco and Guy Pnini. The 12-man squad: Tamir Blatt, Iftach Ziv, Yovel Zoosman, Golan Gutt, Adam Ariel, Jake Cohen, Nimrod Levi, Alex Chubrevich, Itay Segev, Tomer Ginat, Gal Mekel, Bar Timor. Both Mekel and Timor are doubtful for the Georgia clash due to injury. Head Coach Oded Katash spoke ahead of the game, “We are working with teg platers whi are here and healthy. Georgia is a very good team with good qualities, size and can shoot the ball very well. This will be a very challenge game.”

How Yovel Zoosman can help:
“Yovel can be a big help at any time and he has to take a step up as we are missing some players. I know Yovel and I’m sure he can do it.”

Playing with pressure:
“The players will need to handle with the pressure and that’s part of basketball. They will also have to figure out to handle this type of situation. The Russia game gave us a lot of confidence and I’m going to rely on my players to know how to deal with the situation ahead.”

Tomer Ginat also spoke about the challenges that Israel will face against Georgia:
“We have a number of injuries but we have an important game where we will have to give our bodies and soul to win. We will have a big challenge in the paint and we have been preparing for this over the past few weeks. We were in Russia where we played a big size team and we gave our heart. If we give it our all we can do it.”