Kristijan Belic must have wished for a better outcome as he had dozens of friends and family members at the TSC Arena in Backa Topola for the Europa League MD2 home match against Dinamo Zagreb. But the 24-year-old Belgian born Serbian midfielder saw his side take an early lead on the way to a 3-1 defeat. “It is a painful defeat” he said after the match, “I think we controlled the game well for most of it, but it’s not enough. We need to create more, be more aggressive in the final third. We didn’t give them much, but they took what they had, and at this level every opportunity is important.”
On the back of last week’s 0-0 draw away to PAOK Thessaloniki, Belic, and his teammates were looking for their first victory of the Europa League phase, as he reflected: “In both matches we showed that we can play at this level. We play with a lot of courage on the ball, and that is also the reason mistakes happen. But I think people enjoy watching our matches. We are an entertaining team in my opinion. But it is not enough, though, we need to win and get more out of the games. If we had managed to keep the lead another 5–10 minutes, I’m sure we would have scored a second, and then we could have won the game because they would have become much more impatient.”
On the challanges some of his teams had to endure following the Yom Kippur fast that preceded the match, Belic surprised when he revealed: “It’s hard, of course it’s hard. They fast, but they had special energy from God. I will do it today. I am going to fast from Friday evening until Saturday evening. In my calendar, Yom Kippur is on Friday night, so I will fast for 24 hours. I will experience the same thing.”
Maccabi now return to league action as they host Maccabi Haifa on Sunday, as Belic said: “We knew this before qualifying for Europe, and we need to tell ourselves mentally that we are not tired. We need to find motivation, and we know there are players who didn’t go out on international duty so they’ll have time to recover, so we will need to push ourselves. And we’re also returning to Bloomfield. I think if we had taken the lead at Bloomfield in Europe, we wouldn’t have conceded like that we have another player on the pitch there. I can proudly say that everyone here gave everything. Sometimes in football that’s enough, and sometimes it isn’t.”