Maccabi Tel Aviv will face Lugano in Conference League Play-Off first leg action in Switzerland on Thursday night (21:30 Israel time) and both the Head Coach Kenny Miller along with forward Osher Davida spoke about the upcoming tie.

“We held an early morning training session and then set off on our longest flight of the season so far to be here at the stadium,” Miller began. “We’re looking forward to the game. The conditions here are obviously different from what we’re used to. It looks like it has rained here, and I’m sure the players will adapt to that. Despite the disappointment of not progressing in the Europa League, we delivered a very high level of performance against CSKA Sofia. If we can reproduce that level tomorrow, we’ll be in a very good position.”

Miller then addressed the team’s start to the season, “We’ve started the season well. We’ve won five out of six matches and played some fantastic football. We’ll aim to continue in the same way tomorrow. We’re at a challenging point in the season with a Thursday-Sunday-Thursday schedule, and we need to make sure we manage and utilize the squad properly. Our preparation for tomorrow has mainly focused on recovery and rest, to ensure that everyone arrives as fresh as possible.”

The bench boss also discussed the depth of his squad, “It certainly helps to have more options to choose from. We lost several important players for last weekend’s match and the squad looked a little thin, so it’s good to travel with additional players who are returning from suspensions and minor injuries. Our approach is always to come and win the game. The players’ mindset is to go out there and show what we’re capable of and we’re confident in ourselves.”

Osher Davida began his comments about the upcoming clash by referencing the difference in weather from AIL Arena than back home, “That is the beauty of football, sometimes the conditions are like this and sometimes they’re different. We’re used to the heat in Tel Aviv and I think the weather here is much better for football. We’re happy that’s the case and we’ll go out there and try to play as well as we can.”

Davida also spoke about the previous tie with CSKA Sofia that eliminated the yellow-and-blue from Europa League qualification, “We came very close to completing a comeback against CSKA, and although in the end we didn’t go through, we won 3-1 away from home in a difficult game. We’re coming into this in a good mood. We also won the Toto Cup Semi-Final last Sunday and we’re on a winning run. Hopefully we can continue that tomorrow as well.”

As for Maccabi’s foe, Davida added, “Lugano are definitely not an easy team. We have watched and analyzed them. They’re a good team, but so are we and tomorrow we’ll come out and show that. You always know there’s another game the following week and no team goes all-in in the first leg, but in my opinion we need to approach this as a one-off game. We shouldn’t think about the return leg, but instead play the way we know how and win.”