{"id":251759,"date":"2026-08-16T19:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-16T19:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/251759\/"},"modified":"2026-08-16T19:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-16T19:54:10","slug":"israeli-football-clubs-face-both-wins-and-losses-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/251759\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli football clubs face both wins and losses in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hapoel Tel Aviv moved on in Conference League qualifying over the weekend; Maccabi Tel Aviv<\/a> fell out of the Europa League, while Beitar Jerusalem\u2019s campaign came to a cruel end.<\/p>\n

Hapoel Tel Aviv<\/a> advanced to the UEFA Conference League Playoff Round after defeating Katowice 3-2 on aggregate despite falling 2-1 in the second leg. Up next will be a date with Serie A powerhouse Atalanta for a chance to participate in the competition\u2019s league phase.<\/p>\n

At the end of the match, Hapoel Tel Aviv head coach Elyaniv Barda reflected on his side\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said, games like these are played over two halves. We won the first half away from home. We could have done more than 2-0 there, and we knew we were coming into the second half of a very difficult tie. We took a 1-0 lead, and I think we controlled the game until the 75th minute. Then we lost a bit of confidence, conceded a goal, and the second goal came very quickly. In the end, we lost the game, but our goal was to advance to the next round, and we\u2019re happy that we achieved that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shino Zuaretz<\/a>, Chairman of the Israel Football Association, said: \u201cCongratulations to Hapoel Tel Aviv on advancing to the Conference League playoff round. With a supportive fan base, a committed owner, a leading professional and management staff and excellent players, anything seems possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ISRAELISRAEL FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION Chairman Shino Zuaretz addresses the media yesterday regarding the investigation into widespread match-fixing in the lower league of Israeli soccer. (credit: Sport5\/Courtesy)<\/p>\n

Hapoel Tel Aviv applied all kinds of pressure early on in order to increase its aggregate lead in the two-legged tie, and they did just that when Roie Alkukin sent Stav Turiel a marvelous pass that the latter pounded into the back of the goal to take a 1-0 lead (3-0 on aggregate) in the 23rd minute.<\/p>\n

Omri Altman pressed for a second goal to no avail as the half ended with Hapoel Tel Aviv holding the 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n

Boateng comes up short despite Reds pushing ahead early in second half<\/p>\n

The Reds pushed ahead in the opening minutes of the second half, but Emmanuel Boateng just came up short inside the box, as did Altman, while Katowice tried to find a way to cut down the lead.<\/p>\n

As the minutes ticked off the clock, the hosts finally broke through as Ilya Shkurin scored inside the area in the 83rd minute, while Arkadiusz Jedrych added another marker via the penalty spot as the match hit injury time to snatch a 2-1 lead, but Hapoel still held a 3-2 advantage on aggregate and wrapped up the tie.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Maccabi Tel Aviv defeated CSKA Sofia 3-1 in the UEFA Europa League third round, second-leg action but fell on aggregate 4-3 to the Bulgarians and will now drop down to the Conference League playoff round, where it will play Lugano from Switzerland for a place in the competition\u2019s league phase.<\/p>\n

The yellow-and-blue had a tall task at hand as the match kicked off, but Dor Peretz quickly scored the opening goal inside the box as he tapped home an Osher Davida ball for a 1-0 lead in the 12th minute.<\/p>\n

Davida was again in on the action when he lofted a ball into the box that Ester Sokler nodded into the goal, but Stefano Sensi quickly pulled a marker back to make it 2-1 in the 66th minute. Just two minutes later, Helio Varela put the ball on goal that \u2019keeper Fedor Lapoukhov knocked into his own goal to give Kenny Miller\u2019s squad a 3-1 advantage, but that would be as close as Maccabi would get as it was knocked out of the Europa League.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pleased with our performance tonight,\u201d Maccabi Tel Aviv coach Miller began. \u201cWe came here believing that we could win the game and advance to the next round. We came very close, and that only shows how crucial the goal we conceded last week was. Despite the deficit we came into the game with, we continued to believe, and we proved that when we play at our level, stick to the game plan and do the right things, we are a very good team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Miller already looking forward to next challenge for team<\/p>\n

The yellow-and-blue coach is already looking ahead to the next challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe work ahead of the Conference League playoff begins right now. Our main goal is to play in the European group stage this season, and we will prepare in the best possible way to be ready for next week\u2019s match and achieve the result that will take us through to the next round.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, Beitar Jerusalem<\/a> was knocked out of Europe as they fell to Austria Wien in a penalty shootout 4-2 (3-3 on aggregate) in a thrilling clash in UEFA Conference League third-round, second-leg action.<\/p>\n

Head Coach Almog Cohen\u2019s team grabbed a 2-0 lead on goals by Omer Atzily and Johnbosco Kalu and went ahead on aggregate 3-2 after having lost last week 2-1 in the first leg.<\/p>\n

But Kelvin Boateng quickly pulled a goal back to send the match into overtime, which went scoreless, setting up the shootout where Eugene Ansah and Timothy Muzie\u2019s spot kicks both came up short, sending the yellow-and-black home.<\/p>\n

At the end of the match, Beitar Jerusalem bench boss Almog Cohen said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m proud of my players throughout all four games we played. Even when we look back at the previous game and watch it several times, apart from 15-20 minutes in the second half, we controlled the entire match. I\u2019m incredibly proud of the players because we emphasized the tempo and how to keep increasing it. There was only one team on the pitch here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beitar looked to even up the two-legged tie on aggregate and pressed for the opening goal, which it found via Aztily when he unleashed a left-footed low liner that bounced past the Austria Wien \u2019keeper Samuel Radlinger for a 1-0 lead in the 33rd minute. The yellow-and-black doubled the advantage via Kalu as he scored from inside the box in the 58th minute.<\/p>\n

But the hosts quickly found the equalizer two minutes later when Boris Enow coughed up the ball at the top of the area that Boateng put behind Miguel Silva to cut the lead to 2-1 as the score would remain as is at the end of 90 minutes to send the contest into overtime.<\/p>\n

Cohen\u2019s team pressed hard for a go-ahead goal as Yarden Shua had a magnificent chance, but just missed the target wide left of the goal, while Tomer Yosefi\u2019s chance came up short to send the match into a penalty shootout.<\/p>\n

With Austria Wien scoring three straight spot kicks to begin the shootout, Eugene Ansah sent his penalty off the bar, while Timoti Muzie\u2019s was saved by Radlinger, which allowed Sanel Saljic to pound the ball home past a helpless Silva and eliminate Beitar from continental competition.<\/p>\n

See more Israeli sports coverage at www.sportsrabbi.com\/en<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hapoel Tel Aviv moved on in Conference League qualifying over the weekend; Maccabi Tel Aviv fell out of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251760,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[63443,2714,47447,37,384,37991,2576,549],"class_list":["post-251759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-beitar-jerusalem","tag-football","tag-hapoel-tel-aviv","tag-israel","tag-italy","tag-maccabi-tel-aviv","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117106944710498434","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}