The Hapoel Beer Sheva players, the professional staff and all the factors surrounding the team had a difficult night. Last night’s 2:0 loss to Maccabi Haifa will greatly frustrate everyone, after the team was much better under Sami Ofer and yet went down defeated, meaning that the gap between the two grew to seven points at the top of the table. “It’s hard for me. I’m hurt, nervous and mostly disappointed about the result,” said Eliniv Barda at the press conference at the stadium in Haifa. “We looked good. Unfortunately, we conceded two goals from set pieces. We will keep our principles. And we will continue to do things tactically and in these situations, we will score in the future. Bottom line, we are going home without the points.”
A player in Hapoel Be’er Sheva said last night on the way back south: “You can’t say that it’s not fun to hear compliments and that it’s nice to be talked about and appreciated, but we were ready to be criticized for the way we played and to take the three points.”
Breda did not want to settle for a point before the game and came to Haifa to win. He placed only two brakes and thickened the center of the field with Roy Gordana, Shay Elias and Eden Shamir. Gordana played a midfielder who receives an offer from Japan. He was simply excellent next to Dor Micah who was selected for the lineup ahead of Ramsey Spori and was fantastic in the first half. But Be’er Sheva did not know how to translate their great football into goals and they will continue to work on that when the transfer window opens, because the team must find a scorer. Eugene Ansa did an excellent job putting pressure on Maccabi Haifa’s brakes, but he is not a real goal scorer. Estreet Salmani is not counted at all. Tomer Hamed and Itai Schechter are already at the end of their careers. “One can only imagine what kind of team we would have had, if we also had a goal striker who knows how to score goals from all these situations,” said the team.
Barda added last night at the press conference: “The game didn’t get away from us even when we were behind 2:0 and we continued to get into situations. We will fix our standing and see why we were vulnerable.” When asked by the Haifa media why he spoke before the game about provocations and why he was not calmer himself on the lines during the game, Barda said: “I did not speak for a moment about provocations before the game. I answered the question that was asked. I am always temperamental and live the game and who has a problem with that , that’s his problem.”
The team backed up Shafi Suleimanov who missed the penalty. “It could have happened to anyone,” Breda said of his player. “Anyone can miss a penalty.” The team was very disappointed that Maccabi Haifa’s Abdoulaye Sek was not given a red card in the collision with Shay Elias, and they also thought that Maccabi Haifa’s second goal should have been disallowed on the grounds of a foul on Amri Glazer.
Bottom line, Hapoel Beer Sheva will try to pick themselves up after the loss to Maccabi Haifa in order to start a new streak of victories. “We still have to meet Maccabi Haifa twice in the playoffs and Maccabi Tel Aviv three times, so everything is still possible. The championship did not escape us even though we moved away from the goal,” the club concluded.