2024-01-18 07:35:19
The crisis of Maccabi Petah Tikva continues to deepen. Last night (Wednesday), Ran Kozhuk’s team suffered its fifth loss in a row in the league, this time to MS Ashdod, 2:1 deep in extra time and took another step closer to the burning bottom.
The opening was actually not bad, when Mohamed Hindi gave the Malavas the lead with a penalty, and the ability was also relatively good, but in the second half, Kozhuk saw his team fall apart like a house of cards.
It started with the equalizing goal, continued with an unusual incident in which Idan Toklomati tried to climb into the stands and threw bottles at the fans after some of them teased him when he was substituted, and ended with Elad Shaaf’s dramatic winning goal, which kept Kozhuk without a point in his three debut games.
The strong man at the club, Avi Luzon, is disappointed with the start of Kozhuk’s term, but made it clear that despite this the coach continues in his role, when at the end he went down to the dressing room and criticized midfielder Gideon Acqua, who received two yellows and a red in four minutes.
Maccabi Petah Tikva players (Roi Kafir)
Later, the owner also criticized the players when he told them: “How come you can’t even keep a draw in the last second? You should have just kicked the ball out.”
In addition to the difficult situation in the table, most of the headlines were taken by the Toklomati incident. Apart from the suspension that will cause him to be absent from the game against Bnei Sakhnin, the attacking player is expected to stand trial for inappropriate behavior and the past cases show that he may receive a ban of at least three games.
But his loss of temper was a moment that had been brewing for a long time: after the high expectations of him and the talk of selling for large sums of money, the actor has shown less ability recently. Officials at the club claim that last night it just erupted: “Poor man, he’s not to blame. They’re throwing the whole team at him in his first season in the Premier League.”
Now PAT is in trouble: on the one hand, there are no concrete offers for the player that would lead to a sale in January in the amounts that Avi Luzon was trying to get for him, when the last offer submitted was almost two months ago and was a little over two million euros. On the other hand, there is great anger on the part of the fans, who made it clear that he won’t be able to play for them anymore. It seems that the club will have to initiate a special apology between him and the fans, to calm things down in the current situation.
Idan Toklomati confronts the fans with a substitute (Roi Kafir)
If the incidents were not enough, also the striker Ben Shahar, who last night did not get any playing minutes, was furious when he realized that he would not come in as a substitute, went down to the dressing room and, according to eyewitnesses, left the stadium before the end of the game. In his defense, it will be said that the striker arrived this season with the goal of being a leading player at the edge of the attack and does not receive playing minutes. Now, it looks like he will leave the team in the current transfer window.
“We must not break,” said players in the club. “Now we have all the games in which we are supposed to take points, although we should have taken them this time as well. We must start accumulating points.”
The one who did come out to talk to the fans at the end, is defender Jordan Cohen, perhaps the only one among them who took the time to talk to them, while assistant coach Marad Magmadov also talked to them for long minutes. Cohen told them: “This is a difficult time, we are devastated and I understand you. But in this time, we need you to be with us.”
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