Hapoel Tel Aviv came away with a goalless draw against Atalanta in the first leg of UEFA Conference League Playoff Round play and will now ready for the second leg which will be played next week in Miskolc, Hungary.

Following the game Head Coach Elyaniv Barda spoke about the match and a myriad of topics “We can congratulate the guys on a very good performance. We stuck to our principles and played our football against a great team, so the players deserve congratulations. Having said that, it ended 0–0 and we have a second leg in which we’ll want to reproduce this performance. In the end, we stood firm and insisted on doing what we had worked on. There is still room for improvement, but the better chances were ours.”

“In the 90th minute, Assaf Tzur made a double save and kept the score level, keeping the second game alive. Everyone knows this is a team worth €450 million, while we are perhaps worth €15–16 million. So it’s not always the value and the big money that decide things, but rather the soul and heart on the pitch, and every one of the players showed that. In the end, it was enough for a 0–0 draw. We’ll need to be better next week.”

Barda addressed Stav Turiel’s injury before the game, “He felt some discomfort in his hamstring, and we decided not to take a risk. He is very important and helped us in the previous rounds, and we want him back as quickly as possible. But tonight, others stepped up and gave everything. Whenever someone doesn’t play, they are missed and Stav was missed. Others will have to give more of themselves to help us reach the next round.”

“I don’t know whether Turiel will be fit. Today, Douglas Owusu played for the first time and he hadn’t played since last season. We’ll have to take our time with him and we also don’t know whether Emmanuel Boateng will be fit after he was injured.”

Regarding the supporters, who put on a wonderful display, he said, “Our fans have supported and followed us in huge numbers since the beginning of the campaign. It’s very disappointing that we won’t host the game at Bloomfield, because it could have been an incredible spectacle. But in the end, we got through two rounds in Hungary, and they have been a great source of support for us. We’ll try, together with our fans, who create an incredible atmosphere, to get through to the next stage.”

“I don’t deal with assessing our chances; I focus on my team,” Barda continued. “We work on how to improve it and how to deal with what our opponents do. There was similar talk before Ludogorets as well, and this time you can understand where it comes from. We need to come and get a good result and improve. We are happy, but we haven’t won. In the end, we kept the second leg alive, and we’ll come to Miskolc to finish the job.”

“We haven’t played any league games yet. We are a team with a squad that has continued from last season. We have enormous respect for our opponents, but we are focused on ourselves. As time goes on, they will become an even better team, and they have a coach who is at the highest level in the world. I want to focus on the positive things.”

On the fact that it was a game against a big team with many people watching, he said, “I always wish to be in stadiums and at stages like these and for my players to gain international experience and for as many interested parties as possible to come and watch. That’s the job. We want to promote and improve players. It’s a great source of pride for the club that players progress and develop. It’s a very good way to always remain at the top.”

“We are always thinking about how to strengthen the team and create competition, and of course, hopefully there will be two competitions. If that happens, we will obviously want to strengthen the squad in order to meet our objectives,” the coach concluded.

Maurizio Sarri, the Italian team’s coach, also spoke about the matchup, “I expected a difficult game. They were superior to us physically. We lack fluency in our play; every time we receive the ball, we think, and that slows us down. Nevertheless, there are also positive aspects: in our last three games, we haven’t conceded a goal.”