(game summary courtesy of Sport1)
Maccabi Haifa and Sami Ofer Stadium have become an almost unstoppable combination. Now Europe also knows this. Barak Becher’s team gave the blow, the atmosphere around fell to the boards. Those who haven’t experienced it, probably don’t understand how powerful this is. Maccabi Haifa was a luxury car until last season, but now they have introduced groundbreaking improvements. You hear it from the highway and when it’s at its peak, it’s like giving gas in front of a scooter. Olympiakos also felt like a race between a formula car and an electric bike and against Apollon it was no longer pleasant in the second half.
Speaking of a race car, there is a technical team around that has to make sure it is at its peak at the moment of truth. It’s called a timing belt and Bacher, along with his assistants and fitness trainers, brought the machine to its peak just in time. It’s not yet the second round of the league, but a team that wants a group stage in the Champions League should be at its peak already at the beginning of August and that’s how it looks right now as far as Maccabi Haifa is concerned.
The additions that were put on the existing skeleton fit exactly. A kind of filling in the gaps when you see the shelf begin to empty. Right defender Daniel Sondgren and left Pierre Cornot. Like the laws of physics, when you have both right and left there is balance in the whole system. This is exactly what happens in Talchid built by Barak Becher.
As for Sondgren, sometimes it feels too good to be true. Players like him don’t come to Israeli football, but apparently as fate wanted and Aris Thessaloniki made the mistake, Gal Alberman jumped at the bargain and his partner’s Jewish roots convinced him that Israel was a good place for him. All these happened to land in Israel one of the best defenders who played here.
Maccabi Haifa also got stronger in the front. How much the club wooed what was defined as a “monster”. Fernandez Piero meets the definition and from the brakes in the Premier League he will leave mostly bones. What he did to the Greek Menolas and last night in defense of Apollo, is outlawed in some countries of the world.
But beyond strength and power, he also has a lot of intelligence. A player with large body dimensions who knows how to use them to keep the ball, direct it to the right places and add speed to all of this. When Piero starts a race for the ball, walls will also fall on the way, so what is another brake for him? Feels like when the rust is completely gone, he will be unstoppable.
Since Igbini Yakubu there has not been such a player in the league and he has been here for less than a month. To think that after 30 minutes and missing a penalty it was the one who advised him to get on a plane and go home. All the recommenders have disappeared since they were gone. If he continues his progress graph, an amount of 1.6 million euros will sound like a joke on the way to a higher station in Europe.
In the meantime, Piero, Sondgren and of course Ali Mohamed, Khaza, Palanich and their friends, will hear in about two weeks the tune of the Champions League in Sami Ofer. It is true that it is only the playoff stage and the desire is to hear the song at least three more times in the group stage, but it is exactly what is left to complete the atmosphere. Sami Ofer Stadium, Maccabi Haifa, only the red star separates them for a melody and the perfect combination that fits all of these.
