Maccabi Tel Aviv cruised into the European group stages and will be the only Israeli representative playing continental soccer this season after downing FK Panevėžys to punch their ticket to the Europa League playoff round. While the yellow-and-blue saw success and will continue onto the regular season stages of a European competition for the fourth time in five years, Hapoel Beer Sheva crashed out as did Maccabi Petach Tikva to go along with Maccabi Haifa who were eliminated a number of weeks ago in the earlier qualification rounds.

Zarko Lazetic’s Maccabi Tel Aviv put in a dominating performance against the Lithuanian squad in 3rd round, second leg Europa League qualification action to cruise to a 3-0 win (5-1 aggregate) in a home game played at the Haladás Stadium in Szombathely, Hungary due to the security situation in Israel. The victory now sets up a date with the Serbia head coach’s former club FK TSC Bačka Topola in a two legged Europa League playoff tie with the winner easing into the new format of the regular season league stage of the competition and the loser dropping down to the Conference League. The first match will be held back in Hungary on Thursday August 22nd as a home game for Maccabi while the second leg will take place a week later in Serbia.

After a 2-1 win in the first leg, Maccabi set the pace and grabbed a 1-0 lead in first half injury time as Dor Peretz headed home a Gaby Kanichowsky corner kick at the stroke of halftime. Osher Davida took care of a Dor Turgeman ball in the 54th minute to double the advantage while a quarter hour later, Sagiv Yehezkel made his presence felt with a left footed zinger to wrap up the clean sheet win.

“Congratulations are in order for the players and the club,” Lazetic said after the match as he also looked ahead to meeting his former team. “We achieved our first target and now we need to continue to the Europa League. It’s not an easy draw, if they asked me which team I wouldn’t want to face I would have said Bačka Topola but that is life and we will prepare properly. The last 10 days were not easy, we were away from our families and it was not easy for the players to play today.”

“It’s not easy to win in any European match, especially when we played here without fans,” the bench boss added. “I can say that we were stressed in the first half but the goal we scored in injury time gave us confidence and calmness. In the second half we played with more confidence and passed the ball well. We had a lot of chances in the first half as well. Again, congratulations to the players and especially to Nir Bitton who returned after 7 months, we are happy that he is healthy and confident that he will help us.”

Goal scorer Osher Davida, who recently returned to the club following his time with the Israel National Team at the Olympic Games, spoke about the victory and advancing to the next stage, “I am delighted to score at the start of the season as it will give me plenty of confidence and hunger to do more in the future. I am happy we won and qualified to the next stage in Europe which is the most important thing. We haven’t achieved a thing yet and we must do everything to be prepared for next week so we can qualify for the Europa League group stage.”

“We have a new coach and new players,” Davida replied when asked to compare this season with last year. “I am happy with the squad we have as there are loads of good players with plenty of matches so everyone will get to play. I believe in this squad and think we can have an even better season than last year.”

Dan Bitton who returned to play after more than half a season injured was excited to be back on the pitch and contribute to the club, “I’m happy that the coach gave me the opportunity to play, it’s a small gift after seven and a half months of very tough work to get back. I’m very happy and excited. The whole last period of time everything has coordinated with the coach and the medical team and when the right moment would come then I would join back in. I really want to compliment the Maccabi Tel Aviv medical team, the number one medical team in the country. Really, I don’t even have enough words to thank them. In addition to the fact that they are amazing professionals, they are amazing people, you can always talk to them and contact them. They supported me even on days that weren’t easy for me and there were days like that. I want to thank them, I appreciate them and now let the season begin.”

Hapoel Beer Sheva fell to Mladá Boleslav 4-2 (5-3 on aggregate) in the second leg of third round Conference League qualifying to end their European run for the 2024/25 season. The southern reds grabbed a 2-0 first half lead on a Zahi Ahmad header and a Helder Lopes strike to head into the break full of confidence that the playoff round would be waiting for them in just 45 minutes. However, that wouldn’t be the case as the hosts scored four unanswered goals, two coming in the opening quarter hour of the second half with the last pair being scored in the final ten minutes of the match to go along with an embarrassing trio of red cards issued to defender Eitan Tibi, Artur Shushenachev and Shai Elias as Ron Kozuk’s squad tumbled out of Europe.

Maccabi Petach Tikva were blanked by CFR Cluj 1-0 (2-0 on aggregate) on a lone goal by Anton Kresic to end their continental journey on a down note in what was a very difficult quartet of European games as they will now turn their sights back to the domestic league.