Maccabi Tel Aviv blanked Sheriff Tiraspol 5-0 as Sayed Abu Farchi scored a brace to propel the visitors to the victory in UEFA Europa League second round first leg qualifying play. Kenny Miller’s squad will now turn their sights on next Thursday’s return leg in Batumi, Georgia with the Moldovan side as they will look to advance to the third round where they would face the winner of the CSKA Sofia and Qarabag matchup.

The yellow-and-blue came out flying and produced chances galore as Sayed Abu Farchi headed home and Ido Shachar ball from in close and Dor Peretz slotted a Roy Revivo pass also from inside the box to give Maccabi a 2-0 lead at the break. Miller’s team kept pouring on the offense in the second half as Abu Farchi completed a brace from the penalty spot while Sagiv Yehezkel and Issouf Sissokho also found the back of the goal to polish off the one-sided win.

“We wanted to win the game and we came with the right approach,” Kenny Miller said. “This is only our second game of the season and we need to make sure we’re building momentum for the next round and for the start of our league campaign. We knew it would be a difficult match, and we had to produce our best performance. I think we showed that for large stretches of the game.”

“We were the better team tonight. We scored five goals and could have scored even more, so we’re very pleased with both the result and the performance. It was a result we fully deserved, there’s no doubt about that. We started the game really well with an early goal and we should have scored more in the first half. We also scored some excellent goals in the second half.”