There are no ifs, ands, or buts. The yellow-and-black is two points off the top of the table, where Hapoel Beersheba currently resides, and it will need to beat the best in order to be the best.
Beitar Jerusalem will head down south to Beersheba on Saturday night to take on the team that it has to beat in order to win the Israel League Championship.
There are no ifs, ands or buts. The yellow-and-black is two points off the top of the table, where Hapoel Beersheba currently resides, and it will need to beat the best in order to be the best.
Both teams took care of their Championship Playoff openers with 3-0 wins: Beersheba over Hapoel Petah Tikva, and Beitar knocking off a shell of Maccabi Haifa, a once-proud and committed team.
Now they will go head-to-head for a third time this season, and the first of two duels in the playoffs, after the Southern Reds took the first two games, 1-0 at Teddy Stadium and 2-1 at Turner during the regular season.
Beersheba has proven all season long that it deserves to be where it is right now – in first place looking down at the rest of the league.
Dan Bitton had been such a critical piece of the puzzle, with 15 goals to lead the league, but is now out injured due to a heart issue as his scoring and playmaking abilities are going to be unavailable for the final 10 matches of the campaign. However, Kings Kangwa has turned up the notch on his attacking ability and can’t stop scoring goals. It seems that every time he has sniffed the ball this past month, it lands up in the back of the net. With 10 goals and five assists. The 27-year-old Zambian was on his way out not once but twice, when he went to the African Nations Cup and more recently due to the war with Iran, but he’s still here and not only that, he’s better than ever.
Add to the mix Igor Zlatanovic, who scored a brace against Petah Tikva and looks to have finally found his stride since joining Beersheba from Netanya, along with coach Ron Kozuk, who seems to turn everything he touches into gold.
But Beitar is no slouch either, with so many different weapons at coach Barak Itzhaki’s disposal.
From his target men up front – Gonzalez and Kalu – to endless attacking by Omer Aztily (10 goals, six assists) and captain Yarden Shua (13 goals, five assists), along with so many other players who can turn a game around on a dime, the yellow-and-black is a threat for the top spot.
As much as Beersheba doesn’t want to believe it, Beitar can match up to it mano-a-mano and has only matured since the last time they met a number of months ago.
Maccabi Haifa, who visited a packed Teddy Stadium, would normally have been a good test ahead of a showdown with Beersheba, but that’s not the case with this version of the Greens. Barak Bachar and Lior Refaelov will have their hands full over the next few months going through a rebuild of sorts as they desperately have to renew and reinvigorate a squad that looks like a dead horse that has already been to the glue factory and back.
The Greens could not get anything going offensively as Beitar pressured Haifa from the get-go. When Bachar made a triple substitution at the 60th minute, a move that Maccabi Tel Aviv’s Ronny Deila employed last week against the Greens in the Israel State Cup semifinal at Teddy to change the entire complexion of the game.
It was clear that Bachar was hoping for the same, but it was not to be as the players who came on – including a much-maligned Trivante Stewart – started to backpedal soon thereafter and let in not one, but two, goals to close out the game.
Perhaps the Haifa of old would have been able to find a way of creating some sort of havoc and quality chances, but Beitar just kept playing as it had done for the opening hour until it made some moves to refresh the players on the pitch to run off with the win.
Itzhaki has done a marvelous job in managing Beitar this season and keeps pressing the right buttons along with making the correct moves. Despite having a pair of regulars in Adi Yona and Yarin Levy on the shelf with injuries, the former star striker seems to always find the right formula to make up for the loss of key players who may not be available. Just last week, in the Jerusalem derby, Itzhaki pulled another couple of rabbits out of his hat when he started Dor Hugi and Ziv Ben Shimol in place of Shua, who was out due to yellow card accumulation, as well as for the injured Yona and Levy.
Both replacements contributed in the win over Hapoel Jerusalem while Ben Shimol was once again in the starting lineup in the Haifa victory and drew the penalty that led to Shua’s goal to break the deadlock, while also sending Dor Micha a magnificent through-ball in the box that led to the third goal.
As Itzhaki has gotten more comfortable with his squad, he’s been able to mix and match the players and find the right formula for almost every situation imaginable. That also includes the defense, as well as a goalkeeper who has now recorded two clean sheets in a row for the first time this season.
With those two shutouts, 2-0 in the derby and 3-0 against Haifa, Jerusalem is now just one marker behind Beersheba in goal differential, which could end up being crucial as the season comes to a close. Shua explained that the Beitar players have been working hard on this aspect of their game, and that they are one unit in which everyone understands what to do. Itzhaki also commented about how the defense doesn’t start only with the defenders, it starts with high pressure – and that the more aggressively Beitar presses on offense, the more the defense benefits.
The defense is clearly something that Itzhaki has made a point to concentrate on because he knows that on some days he may not have his best offensive form, but can always have his best defense as long as the effort is there. He is also very aware that defense wins championships, and that’s going to be the club’s big test in the championship playoffs.