Without a home and the Olympic players: four teams will enter the European Cup circuit

We didn’t have time to say letters, the Euro is over and a new season is starting. Maccabi Tel Aviv is the champion of the champions, tomorrow Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel Beer Sheva will play in the Toto Cup and during the next week four teams will enter the European Cup circuit, at the same time as the opening of the Olympic tournament in France, and the entry of the other teams in the league into the Toto Cup circuit.

The fact that the Israeli teams will all start their games in Europe in the early second round is somewhat of a relief for the champion and cup holder who can continue in Europe even in case of relegation (Maccabi Tel Aviv can also survive two relegations in the qualifiers), but for Maccabi Haifa and Hapoel BS, Every stumble will be costly, and these are two teams that can reach the group stage, if they don’t get into trouble in the next round and get – at least Beer Sheva – a more reasonable draw later on.

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Maccabi Tel Aviv has the most difficult problem. Of the unranked in the lottery, Stiave Bucharest is a high-profile club that also won the cup with the big ears. Let’s add to that that five Maccabi Tel players will participate in at least the group stage of the Olympic tournament, until July 30 , and the Romanians do not face such a problem, because Romania did not make it to the Olympics despite hosting the Junior Euro.

How much does it hurt? As far as Dor Turgeman and Roy Revivo are concerned, this is an insult. As for the rest – Ido Shachar, Osher Davide and Elad Madmon – this is depth for the squad that will have to face two important games, without home games. So far, Maccabi Tel Aviv has played one game – in the Champions League – against Maccabi Tel Aviv. Her Romanian opponent has already played four games and tomorrow’s game will be the fifth. Although two of the games were against the champions of San Marino, Stiava will arrive after two league games, and the good news for Maccabi – in their first home game against Universitat Cluj, they did not look good.

Apparently, the absence of the five Olympians was supposed to be offset by the presence of four Steaua players with the Romanian national team in the Euros, but Romania flew out of the Euros in the round of 16, two weeks ago, and three of the four were not involved in the Euros at all, so they did not need a dramatic rest. The fourth, the top scorer of the league, Florinal Coman, left for the team from Qatar, and his absence will be felt, at least against Maccabi Tel Aviv.

Contrary to the statements of the owner of the colorful Stiava, Gigi Bakali, Stiava is not a favorite despite all the troubles of Maccabi Tel Aviv, but she can definitely dethrone the yellows. The advantage of the crowd, the great hunger, and the disadvantage of the Olympic players, narrows any gap that was about to win Maccabi Tel Aviv earlier.

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Maccabi Petah Tikva will face Portuguese Braga in the Europa League qualifiers. It’s an impossible draw for the Malavas, because the gap that was big before, has grown under the auspices of the Olympic Games. Not that Maccabi PAT has any player in the squad itself, but it has two on stand-by, and every player with such a profile in Maccabi PAT is like half a team. Even the appointment of the inexperienced Dan Roman as coach does not outwardly convey a struggle for progress in Europe.

Braga released significant players in the summer and did not replace them with players of this level yet. The league in Portugal starts on August 11, and it seems that Braga are aiming to pay and the highest stages in Europe. It could be an advantage for Petah Tikva, assuming there is someone out there who thinks it is possible to recreate the sensation from 2005, when the team blew Partizan Belgrade on the way to the group stage, after a resounding 2-5 away win.

It seems that the fact that Maccabi PAT will be relegated to the third round of the Conference League qualifiers in the event of relegation, and will have to go through two opponents to reach the group stage, creates a situation where both Braga and Maccabi PAT know where they are going in this matchup.

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Maccabi Haifa, with or without a significant reinforcement, with or without Sek who has gone through a personal tragedy and with or without players like Shawn Goldberg and Elie Feingold who are with the Olympic team in Paris – should pass the Azeri Sabah. It will happen even without Anan Halaili, in whose place Dia Saba returned. It will be difficult for Saba to survive this period, when part of the Haifa audience does not forget his wife’s statement after the October 7 attack. To the joy of Haifa in this case, the games in the European Cups will not be held in Israel, and Saba will be focused on football, at least according to expectations.

Maccabi Haifa players celebrate after the victory over Ghent and promotion to the round of 16 of the Conference League (Photo: AP/Geert Vanden Wijngaert)

Sabah finished third in the Azeri League last season, 25 points behind the champion Karabakh, which is considered a decent team in terms of the second tier in Europe. Sabah made a massive acquisition in the off-season, one of which is Pavol Sprenko, a tall Slovak center forward who was also acquired at least 4 times during his career, and played for Aalborg in Denmark. It’s not certain that this is what will tickle Haifa, who after a year received Barak Bakr – the full or the hungry, we’ll know that yet – but still: the Azeri teams are ranked above Cyprus, Bulgaria and Romania in the UEFA rankings. They must not be underestimated for a moment. Haifa will not have a walk in the park .

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The one who is most worrying is Hapoel B.S. It seems that the Barkat family has taken their foot off the pedal, after six years without a championship and almost without competing for it. There is no flashy acquisition or significant acquisition at all, and also the appointment of Ran Kozhoch who, after all, lacks experience, points to some A financial season in the background Beer Sheva strangely chose to host Charna Mora and Rena in Bulgaria (in Lovch), despite the difficulties in finding a place to host – there are such options.

Maybe it was also a matter of savings. Those who host a Bulgarian team in Bulgaria probably put less of their resources and passions on the European Cup, perhaps precisely because of this thing: without a home, it’s not interesting.

Beer Sheva can get past the Bulgarian runner-up Charna Mora, who will host Beer Sheva at the home of the champion Ludogorets (which is the same as Beer Sheva will host in Bloomfield). The Bulgarians changed a goalkeeper in the summer. The first goalkeeper, Ivan Deulgrove, signed with CSKA Sofia, and in his place, the veteran Flamen Ilive, goalkeeper of the Bulgarian national team in 2017-18, who played for 7 years on and off in the Romanian league and was both the goalkeeper of Levski Sofia and the assistant goalkeeper of Ludogorets, returned.

And Beer Sheva will still have a hard time. The Bulgarian teams have been relatively successful – even though the league has a low profile there – against Israeli teams in the past, and it’s enough to mention Levski Sofia, who knocked out Be’er Sheva in the early third round last season. Levski, just for example, finished last season 11 points below Charna Mora. For some reason it seems that this season Bulgaria will be insurmountable for Beer Sheva.

The fact that the Israeli teams do not host in Israel, and every game abroad is a difficult security operation, took a lot of the spirit out of the sails of the participating teams. It would not be a risk to say that this year’s scoring from the team’s games in Europe will drop significantly compared to previous years and harm the chances of Israeli soccer to advance. I wish we were deceived.