Doron Ben Dor
Gal Aral and Gidi Kaniuk celebrate (Itzik Blanitsky)
Hapoel Haifa owner Yoav Katz landed in Israel on Thursday and will watch Sami Ofer in his team’s game against Kiryat Shmona today (Saturday) at 5:30 p.m. Katz confirmed the first publication in ONE, regarding contacts with the foreigner Arbidas Novikovas in order to sign him in place of Dino Stieglitz.
Roni Levy will make a number of changes in the lineup tomorrow, such as placing Denis Polyakov in the 11th in the center of the defense and Aleksandar Shechkic in the midfield alongside Gal Aral and Gidi Kaniuk. The latter, who returned for a second term and so far has not been able to restore his ability, said: “From me personally I expected more, but there are still a lot of games and I am starting to feel better and I hope I will get into things.”
Kaniuk continued: “I’ve never had this balance of not scoring goals and assists in my career, so I’m also working hard mentally to deal with things I haven’t dealt with before. I have no magic cures, just work hard and fix. It’s impossible to explain our season on one foot, we haven’t connected as a team since the beginning of the year, certainly from an offensive point of view because there are players here with numbers but it doesn’t manage to be reflected.
“There is nothing to fight it, you have to understand it and grow from it. I hope we achieve the goal of the top playoffs, we have a better squad than many teams in the league and we have experience and I believe this will decide the little things. The league is very equal this year, it reminds me of the national league, a team that will be stable and bring points from every game will be in the top playoffs.
“Every loss sucks, we are winners and we don’t want to lose, we didn’t deserve to lose in Netanya but that’s football and we weren’t able to respond and equalize, there’s nothing to worry about, we just have to get three points in the next game in front of our home crowd. The team was not built properly and now we are making corrections to help us express ourselves better, but it is a process and it does not happen in a day or two, we are not tennis players, that the team is not good, everyone is not good. Of course, my role is in the middle of the field, but whatever they ask of me, I will do my best and help the team.”
