The first round is over and the Premier League stops and goes into the World Cup break. After the first 13 rounds, the teams take a long break during which some will be able to rest after the busy schedule they had, some can be calm and think about where they can still improve, and some will have to make a significant change to escape from the bottom.
After a great summer for Israeli football, champion Maccabi Haifa leads in first place followed by Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Beer Sheva. It seems that a three-way fight for the championship title is expected this season as well, while the others are struggling. Hapoel Jerusalem and Hapoel Hadera surprised and are part of the top, but the big names are at the bottom and teams like Beitar Jerusalem are below the red line and in danger of relegation. Now is the time to summarize the round that was.
Haifa with the best season opening in the Becher era
Maccabi Haifa proved that it manages to conduct itself well in two competitive frameworks at the same time. The Israeli representative in the Champions League finished the first round in the Israeli League as the winter champion. The Greens did an intense campaign in the group stage of the Champions League against strong and rich opponents, but they still haven’t abandoned the league. True, from time to time they recorded embarrassing losses to Maccabi Bnei Rayna and Hapoel Jerusalem and did not always play the attractive football that characterizes them in recent years, but despite this they beat both Hapoel Beer Sheva and Maccabi Tel Aviv, both contenders for the crown, and took first place.
Maccabi Haifa ends the first round at the top with 11 wins in 13 games and 33 points in their balance. For comparison, last season it had only nine wins and accumulated 29 points in the first round, in which it lost to both Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel Beer Sheva. In Barak Becher’s first season, his team had 10 wins and scored 31 points at the start of the season. Therefore, this is the best season in the Barak Becher era at Maccabi Haifa. Maybe they look tired and often achieve narrow victories, but in terms of efficiency – his players win.
Don’t eulogize them: Maccabi Tel Aviv and Hapoel BS are in the fight
Maccabi Haifa is in first place in the table, but it should also look in the rearview mirror and hope that its two rivals for the top will not close the gap from it. Hapoel Beer Sheva and Maccabi Tel Aviv are behind it, still at a relatively short distance of only four points, and both are aiming for the championship after having strengthened significantly in the summer. It is forbidden to eulogize them, especially when there are several more direct meetings between them, and there, probably, everything will be decided.
Eliniv Barda’s work in Hapoel Beer Sheva is noteworthy, because he too managed to manage in two frameworks at the same time with a fascinating campaign in the group stage of the Conference League. Also, despite a bad start to the season in the Premier League and the fact that the Reds lost points in four different games, the man on the lines managed to stabilize it and bring it back to the top with a series of victories at the end of the round.
Maccabi Tel Aviv finishes the first round in second place and is also of course able to win the championship plate. Vladimir Ivitch, the coach who returned to Maccabi Tel Aviv, wanted to take control of the league again at the start of the season, after arming himself with the biggest Israeli stars – such as Eran Zahavi, Nir Biton, Dor Peretz and Jonathan Cohen who joined Oskar Gloch and others. They scored the most goals in the league and in defense they maintained stability, after all Maccabi Tel Aviv conceded only six goals so they have the best defense in the league, but they conceded four of these goals from Maccabi Haifa and Ha’poel Be’er Sheva who beat them.
Against Maccabi Haifa, Ivić’s game plan was not good and against Hapoel Beer Sheva with Dan Glazer’s Red, everything got complicated, but you have to remember that both games were outside and luckily for Ivić there is still time to fix and improve the situation. It is true that everyone expected Maccabi Tel Aviv to lead the table when its two rivals played in the group stage of the European factories at the same time, but at the moment it is still in the top picture of the Premier League and of course everything is open. In the following rounds no one is allowed to stumble.
Round coach: Barak Becher
The coach of the first round is Barak Becher, who managed to manage the staff at Maccabi Haifa to the best of his abilities. It’s not just him, but his entire professional team did a good job, considering that he had to run two frames at the same time and with quite a few injuries. The performance of the Greens in the Champions League qualifiers and in the group stage proved that he is the most dominant coach of all in Israel. And yet, Becher has hungry competitors and of course it’s not over yet. He succeeded in the first half of the season, what will happen in the second part?
The disappointing ones: the big clubs that fell to the bottom
Quite surprisingly, the first round ends with teams such as Hapoel Tel Aviv, Beitar Jerusalem, Ironi Kiryat Shmona, Maccabi Netanya and Hapoel Haifa appearing in the lower part of the table. These teams do not rise and those who take their place at the top, surprisingly, are precisely Hapoel Jerusalem which is in fourth place and Hapoel Hadera is fifth in the table, that is precisely those who are supposedly supposed to fight for survival.
The teams at the bottom were of course forced to perform shocks already in the first round. Hapoel Haifa fired Nir Klinger and replaced him with Roni Levy, Hapoel Tel Aviv said goodbye to Kobe Medicine and landed Slobodan Drapich in the Khodorov complex, and Maccabi Netanya said goodbye to Bnei Lam who led the team to thrilling football last season, but left it when it was at the bottom again.
Unlike them, Nir Berkovich still receives credit and to his credit it can be said that his team tries to play football against every opponent and on every field, Menachem Koretsky is still standing on the lines in Kiryat Shmona and Yossi Abouxis is holding his own in Beitar Jerusalem, so that the three teams that fell into the last three places and are in danger Iradah still haven’t said goodbye to those who led them there, in an era where there is usually not much patience for coaches who fail.
It’s crazy to think that this round ends with Beitar and Kiryat Shmona below the red line, but the difference between the last in the table and the team in seventh place is only six points, so it seems that there will be many more moves down the road. Bottom line, in the Premier League there are three teams that are above all – And everything else is about the same level.
Player of the round: Omar Atzili
He beat Maccabi Netanya 1:4 with three goals and an assist, he also scored and assisted in the dramatic 1:2 victory over Hapoel Beer Sheva in Turner, he scored against Nes Ziona, he scored twice the last two goals in the 2:3 against Kiryat Shmona, And in the last game of the round against Hapoel Tel Aviv, he celebrated with a brace and two assists. Omar Atzili ends the round when he stands at the top of the top scorer table and king of assists, with nine league goals and another seven assists. Once again he is above everyone and once again he wins decisive games with amazing performances.
The surprise of the round: Rotem Hatuel
He came to Hapoel Be’er Sheva as a test taker, impressed, signed – and this season his career took an amazing turn. Rotem Hatuel did not complete 90 full minutes in any league game, but he managed to surprise everyone and score eight goals already in the first round. After such a season opening, no one can ignore Hapoel Beer Sheva’s joker. Alongside this, another discovery from Be’er Sheva is the placement of Shagib Yehezkel as a right defender.
The stranger of the round: Chiron Sherry
It has been four seasons that the Surinamese midfielder Chiron Sherry has been in Maccabi Haifa, and he is only getting better and better with time. At the age of 34 Chiron Sherry leads Maccabi Haifa to the top of the table with huge performances on the grass. He has four goals and four assists, but his contribution is not only expressed in this. The smart passes, the construction of the moves and the fact that he is irreplaceable in Maccabi Haifa place him as one of the foreigners who most prominently and significantly upgrades the leadership.
Round match: Hapoel Jerusalem – Maccabi Haifa 0:3
The state champion arrived in her strongest lineup at the Teddy Stadium for the meeting against Hapoel Jerusalem and she did not dream that this would be the result at the end. Ziv Aryeh’s team, ranked fourth, managed to surprise Barak Becher’s team in one of the surprising games in the first round. It’s not a small victory, it was a defeat, and for that the Reds deserve all the praise. It was at the beginning of the round and the Jerusalemites played good football, which gave everyone a glimpse of the good season ahead.
The team of the round: four representatives from Haifa
At the end of the first round, several players from different positions stood out, so it was decided this time to choose the best defensive players, the best link players and the best attacking players, regardless of their positions on the field, in a 4:4:2 formation.
The outstanding goalkeeper could easily have been Omri Glazer, but at the head of the good defense is the goalkeeper from Maccabi Tel Aviv, so he was chosen. Among the defensive players, four shortstops from the top four teams who also have the best defenses stood out. In the midfield, the most influential players were selected and in the attack, the two players who scored the most goals were selected. They deserve to appear in the tour team.
goalkeeper: Daniel Peretz
protection: Enrique Saborit, Unjay Bacho, Miguel Vitor, Sean Goldberg.
link: Shafi Suleimanov, Chiron Sherry, Neta Lavi, Oskar Gloch.
attack: Omar Atzili and Rotem Hatuel.
Quote of the round: “I fell asleep in the 60th minute”
Hapoel Jerusalem coach, Ziv Arya, answers the question of whether he saw the qualification match of Maccabi Haifa in the Champions League against Red Star Belgrade, on a night when the whole country failed to close an eye. Admit it, there is nothing like the Israeli league.
