‘9 ⚽️ 1-0 Vlad Kart goal, Roey Sartov
‘64 ⚽️ 1-1 Bnei Yehud goal (penalty)
‘94 ⚽️ 1-2 Bnei Yehud goal
Top row (from left to right): David Pernitchi, Sebastian Israel, Ron Sharifi, Gaston Hilman, Vlad Kart, Evgeny Kart, Daniel Herszenhaut, Mati Yelen, Mono Bechini, Leo Gewertz,Tom Printac and Nadav Izmirli.
Bottom row (from left to right): Sam Sank, Roey Sartov, Ariel Peretz, Josh Fischbach, Allan Camarov, Fernando Zatz, Azanao Aristo and Guile Meyer.
In the season's most important fixture to date, we, unfortunately, lost 2-1 to the league leaders despite being one goal up at halftime. A win would have put us 2 points behind our opposition, but defeat all but mathematically ends our hopes of reaching the play-offs.
Gaston Hilman captained the team after Sam Sank pulled out through injury in the warmup, while there were returns to the starting lineup for Fernando Zatz, Daniel Herszenhaut, Allan Camarov and Vlad Kart.
Vlad's return to the team culminated with an early goal as Roey Sartov's wayward shot was directed into the bottom corner from the Russian striker, in one of the very few chances for either team in the first half.
Bnei Yehud, who surprisingly top the Liga Gimmel table at this point, was hardly showing why they are currently the number one team in the league and we really should have put the game to bed in the opening 45 minutes.
The second half was a different story though and a controversial penalty put Yehud on level terms, as Leo Gewertz could not repeat his penalty heroics from last week, despite getting a hand on the ball.
With a draw not being a good enough result with three games remaining, we tried to find the winner as the game reached its final moments but we couldn't quite break down the Yehud defence.
As we threw everything forward in the final few minutes, Yehud were able to counter-attack and score a winner in injury time to break our hearts and compound us to another season where we miss out on the playoffs.
The defeat means we are dependent on other results to finish in the top 3, as well as needing to win our final two games of the season, against Otzma Holon and HaKoach Ramat Gan.