'44 âš½ 0-1 Hod HaSharon goal '47 âš½ 0-2 Hod HaSharon goal
Top row (from left to right): Yoav Greenberg, Zequi Lubocki, Martin Siber, Max Russell, Misha Marianoff, Gabriel Kuerlander and Niv Gittelman.
Bottom row (from left to right): Ehud Elbagon, Roco, Manu Rivelis, Nico Fischman, Martin Lagman, Kevin Natanzon, Nico Milieris, Nico Rivelis and Zack Shooter.
It was great to see the return of Gal Noymark ans Sam Friedman to the squad , both who played big parts in a very good team performance, but unfortunately was not quite good enough from us all to get any points.
We started with a 5-4-1 formation against Hod Hasharon, a team who missed out on promotion last year by just 1 point having sat in the top two positions almost the whole year until the final weeks so we knew this would be a tough game. We defended well and passed the ball around nicely on the most part, when keeping it on the floor we did well, but it is fair to say it was Hod Hasharon who had most of the possession and shots on goal, we didn't offer anything going forward in that first half.
Despite a solid defence in the first half, we were undone with a superb finish from the edge of the D into the top corner just before the break which was a blow to a strong half of holding off our opponents.
We now needed a goal and a better outlet, so Matt Keston changed it to 4-5-1 to have an extra in midfield and go at goal. However, we made life difficult for ourselves within 2 minutes of the half with a goal out of nothing; we gave the ball away, they lobbed it over the top of our defence, we misjudged the flight of the ball and their striker was in to finish the 1-on-1 and make it 0-2.
We then started playing some great football, creating chances and pushing forward. Having no real chances in the first half we then created a lot, their goalkeeper making a number of good saves from Niv Gur, Gal Noymark, Sabi Beraha and Toby Green, two of which were clear cut chances that we should have finished but were not clinical enough.
Hod HaSharon also had their chances in the second half, we got away with a couple as Sam made good saves and they hit the post. It was us that far more dominated the play but to no avail despite a good performance.