While the 2024 Paris Olympic Games will only officially open on Friday, the Israel Under-23 soccer team was already in action on Wednesday night as they played Mali to a 1-1 draw in Group D. The blue-and-white will play their second game on Saturday night when they face Paraguay in what will be a crucial contest, after Japan, Israel\u2019s final group play opponent who they face on Tuesday, thumped the aforementioned Paraguay 5-0.<\/p>\n
After a goalless first half, Israel broke through with a tremendous play from starlet Oscar Gloukh who glided into the box and sent the ball towards Omri Gandelman, however, Hamidou Diallo knocked it into his own goal giving the blue-and-white a 1-0 lead. But just five minutes later Cheickna Doumbia headed home the equalizer and beat keeper Omer Niron to even up the score as the two sides took a point a piece for their efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cMixed feelings,\u201d Luzon began after the match. \u201cWe played against a very physical team and it was not easy for us defensively. Offensively, we created decent chances to score a goal and we should have been calmer when we tried to finish. I think that once I added more midfielders it helped us score a goal. I expect from the team more and more from myself. There are no free meals and no honeymoon, you have to suffer to get the points.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bench boss continued and looked ahead to the Paraguay match, \u201cI\u2019ve been a coach for over 20 years and this is the most exciting game of my life with all of the Israeli flags and all of the Jewish people who came to support us. Paraguay is also a very physical team with good wing play. I have no complaints about my players, we collected a point in a subpar game that I think we could have lost. We will continue on and improve, we can do much more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oskar Gloukh also reflected on the draw, \u201cObviously we are happy to leave with a point and not lose. We will come into the next game better prepared and come to win. This game didn’t go exactly the way we wanted, Mali controlled the tempo and we waited for a chance to counter attack. Yes we had some opportunities, but what\u2019s done is done and we will move on. The most positive part I believe is that we stayed together. You can never be satisfied with just a point, but it was very exciting, we wanted to make the crowd happy, it was close.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
While the 2024 Paris Olympic Games will only officially open on Friday, the Israel Under-23 soccer team was already in action on Wednesday night as they played Mali to a 1-1 draw in Group D. The blue-and-white will play their second game on Saturday night when they face Paraguay in what will be a crucial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":115512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-115514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holy-land-hoops","tag-israel","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n