Raz Amir, Geneva |
Murat Yakin on the road (Raz Amir)
After the 1:1 against Kosovo, the Israeli national team will continue the Euro qualifying campaign tomorrow (Tuesday) at 21:45, when they will be hosted by Switzerland. Murat Yakin’s team will arrive after dismantling Belarus 0:5 and today, the coach spoke before the meeting. Even before that, the local team stated that only 10,000 tickets had been sold so far for the game.
“I can’t answer the question about whether I was surprised that Eran Zahavi is not on the Israeli team’s roster, because this is not a question about football in my view,” he said Yakin. The Swiss were very surprised by the reason why the Maccabi Tel Aviv striker was not included in the squad and clarified that the way the coach reacted was due to this: “He thought that Zahabi had some kind of injury or something, he was very surprised when he heard that it was because of the room.”
On his bad memories of Israel, against which was his last game as a player in the national team, Yakin said: “Switzerland has not beaten Israel since then, we ended in a draw, I got injured at the end of the game. So the memories are not too good.”
On Israel’s strengths, he added: “An interesting team, interesting players, they will be asked to defend strongly because we are better, but Israel is dangerous in transitions. Their right back and left back are attacking and dangerous as strikers, so we will have to be smart. We will have to control so that they won’t be able to enter the game.”
the captain, Jacka granite, commented on the possibility of Switzerland finishing the house with 10 out of 10: “Yes, you have to think about it. It’s not arrogance, I respect every opponent but the goal is to finish with all 30 points. Have I changed? I don’t know why this topic keeps coming up. You cannot change a person in four months. We were eliminated against Portugal, we suffered a blow. Four months later we are here playing football.”
