Maccabi Tel Aviv fell to CSKA Sofia 3-0 as a trio of goal scorers found the back of the net to put the yellow-and-blue on the verge of being knocked out of the Europa League. Next week, Head Coach Kenny Miller\u2019s squad will head to Bulgaria for the second leg of their third round qualifying tie with plenty of work to do in order to punch their ticket to the playoff round where OFI Crete awaits. Should they fall in the two legged tie then Maccabi would play against either Lugano or Runavik in the Conference League Playoff Round.<\/p>\n
Sofia put Maccabi on the back-heels quickly and snatched a quick 1-0 lead when Maks Ebong beat keeper Ofek Melika from inside of the box in the 9th minute. The visitors doubled their advantage twenty minutes later when Leandro Godoy slammed home the ball on a beautiful volley to head into the break with a commanding 2-0 lead. <\/p>\n
Miller made wholesale changes at the break to freshen up the yellow-and-blue lineup as the second half began as well as during the final 45 minutes but Sofia added yet another marker this time from Joel Zwarts to wrap up the victory. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis tie is still far from over,\u201d Maccabi Tel Aviv Head Coach Kenny Miller began. \u201cBut the goal we conceded at the end certainly makes the challenge more difficult. Here were some good things throughout the game, but there were also a lot of bad things. Once again, we didn’t win our individual battles, which is the ‘dirty’ side of football, and we were too slow tracking back after giving the ball away cheaply. I felt we lost possession far too many times even when we weren’t under any pressure, like on the third goal, which came from a simple forward pass and a counterattack. We were far too open in those moments and that’s not something that characterized us at the start of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maccabi Tel Aviv fell to CSKA Sofia 3-0 as a trio of goal scorers found the back of the net to put the yellow-and-blue on the verge of being knocked out of the Europa League. Next week, Head Coach Kenny Miller\u2019s squad will head to Bulgaria for the second leg of their third round qualifying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":187232,"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":[20],"tags":[4],"class_list":["post-187231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-israel-2","tag-maccabi-tel-aviv","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n