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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Miller began. \u201cWe\u2019re looking forward to the game. The conditions here are obviously different from what we\u2019re used to. It looks like it has rained here, and I\u2019m 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\u2019ll be in a very good position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Miller then addressed the team\u2019s start to the season, \u201cWe\u2019ve started the season well. We\u2019ve won five out of six matches and played some fantastic football. We\u2019ll aim to continue in the same way tomorrow. We\u2019re 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bench boss also discussed the depth of his squad, \u201cIt certainly helps to have more options to choose from. We lost several important players for last weekend\u2019s match and the squad looked a little thin, so it\u2019s 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\u2019 mindset is to go out there and show what we\u2019re capable of and we\u2019re confident in ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Osher Davida began his comments about the upcoming clash by referencing the difference in weather from AIL Arena than back home, \u201cThat is the beauty of football, sometimes the conditions are like this and sometimes they\u2019re different. We\u2019re used to the heat in Tel Aviv and I think the weather here is much better for football. We\u2019re happy that\u2019s the case and we\u2019ll go out there and try to play as well as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davida also spoke about the previous tie with CSKA Sofia that eliminated the yellow-and-blue from Europa League qualification, \u201cWe came very close to completing a comeback against CSKA, and although in the end we didn\u2019t go through, we won 3-1 away from home in a difficult game. We\u2019re coming into this in a good mood. We also won the Toto Cup Semi-Final last Sunday and we\u2019re on a winning run. Hopefully we can continue that tomorrow as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for Maccabi\u2019s foe, Davida added, \u201cLugano are definitely not an easy team. We have watched and analyzed them. They\u2019re a good team, but so are we and tomorrow we\u2019ll come out and show that. You always know there\u2019s 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\u2019t think about the return leg, but instead play the way we know how and win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. \u201cWe held an early morning training session and then set off on our longest flight of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":188718,"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-188710","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