Despite Maccabi Tel Aviv's huge and convincing 0: 5 victory over Helsinki, which was also the second highest result ever achieved by the Yellows in Europe, no one on the team still knows if their big crisis is behind them or not.
"We must not be blinded, we defeated a weak opponent at the levels," admitted Maccabi, where they know that the real test is against Ashdod and then Kiryat Shmona.
Losing points in one of those two games in the league - and the great top five against Helsinki will probably not prevent the replacement of coach Patrick Van Leven, just as happened last year with Giorgos Donis, who was sacked despite the team qualifying for the last 32 in the Europa League.
Economically, Maccabi Tel Aviv hopes that in the second round at home they will also be able to get between 7 and 9 points that will be worth a lot of money. For the 7 points that Maccabi has achieved so far, it will receive 1.16 million euros in grants from the UEFA.
Van Leven.
About borrowed time?
Photo: Berni Ardov,
Contact Gabi Knikowski, who won a double and was the best in the Yellows, received compliments for his performance.
On the other hand, Maccabi again did not like the team's defensive game, which was bad and only luckily it did not absorb.
Eden Shamir scored for the second game in a row in Europe and said: "
We are not used to the weather that was here or the synthetic grass but from the first minute we showed that we came to take the points and played good football. We got into a lot of situations, we scored five, so it's great for us."