The Israel National Team visits France at Stade de France in Paris on Thursday (21:45) as the blue-and-white will be playing in their final two Nations League games ahead of World Cup qualifying that begins in early 2025. Following the away fixture against France, Israel will “host” Belgium in Hungary on Sunday due to the security situation.

Head Coach Ran Ben Shimon will be looking to record his first points of the campaign which sees his squad sit with an 0-4 record in group play, but more important for the bench boss is the process that he has been going through in order to have a competitive side once the World Cup qualifiers begin in the spring.

“My way of preparing for each match is as I think it should be prepared for. Right now in the Nations League the results may have not turned out the way we wanted them to, but throughout the games up until the 70-75th minute and even against France until the 86th minute, we were in the game.”

While the results haven’t been there, Ben Shimon doesn’t even want to use the word difficult as a description, “Those whose situation is difficult are the people who are fighting in Israel to bring peace to the future of our children. When we are off the field it is difficult for us with the news from Israel, it hurts us a lot, but we know how to make the separation on the pitch. The real hardships are for those who fighting for our country. We will play our best game to give some morale to the people in Israel.”

“We are facing teams from the very highest levels of football,” Ben Shimon continued. “In all of the games we scored and immediately after that we were also exposed and conceded when the opponent raised their level of play. We will have to know how to deal with that too. We analyzed these things and this is part of what we will have to improve for the next campaign, which will be much more competitive and with goals that are achievable.”
As for not having the opportunity to play at home in the Holy Land, Ben Shimon wishes that this was not the case, “It is a sad situation for us not to play in Israel. We want to play in front of the people that we play for, but there are things that are not up to me. In my mind, it’s just preparing my team to play as well as possible against a very strong team. I hope that the people from the Jewish community will come to see us, it will be a great honor for us. I hope that everything will be good, that everyone will be safe and that there will be a good game.”

Captain Eli Dasa also reflected on the upcoming window of matches, “Thursday’s game is an opportunity for us to represent the country as best as possible. We meet one of the best teams in the world and it will be a good experience for us. We expect to represent our country and have a good game, even though the timing is not perfect.”

“I came back from injury recently and I feel perfectly fine. I’m happy to return to the team, to the system and process that we have started to create. I hope we succeed against France as we have a strong, very difficult opponent. For large periods of time in the last few games we showed that we are able to compete at this level and with small improvements we can do some big things.”

Dasa and his teammates would be very happy if they could be playing in Israel, but will be content if there will be some fans in the stands, “Of course it’s a big disadvantage for us that we don’t play in Israel, but we thank those who are brave enough to come and see us. I have many friends from Paris who want to come to the game but can’t or are a little afraid. But even the few who will come it will be nice to see that support.”