The pre-European tournament in Israel tonight (Sunday) reaches its climax with the meeting between Israel and Bulgaria at 20:00 (live broadcast on SPORT5). This is the last meeting at home in which Bulgaria already last night secured its promotion to the finals of the European Championship after convincingly defeating the Austrian team 0: 3. The Austrian team has finished its appearances in the tournament and will wait today for the result of the game between Bulgaria and Israel to know its final position.
It can be said that the Bulgarian team that Israel will face today is without a doubt the strongest team of all the qualifiers. In the previous game against our team last Thursday, Bulgaria defeated Israel despite a good game of the team, and Noam Katz and his trainees know that only a heroic fighting game together with the players’ record ability will give us a chance to win tonight, as mentioned, only in case of 0: 3 or 1: 3 over Bulgaria Israel will overtake Austria and be in second place at home.
Alex Osokin, one of the veteran players on the team, commented on the meeting: “Our eyes are on one goal – victory. We learned the Bulgarians, we made changes from the first game that are going to make their game difficult, today come to devour the field and play with a lot of energy and show everyone our ability.”
Tamir Hershko also spoke about the challenge: “Every athlete has moments in his career that go with him for many years, two years ago it was very close, this time it is at home, after 50 years it is possible, there is alertness, quality and most importantly you need to bring heart and soul.”
As you may recall, the Austrian team lost last Friday to the Israeli team 2: 3 after beating them in the opening game 0: 3 and therefore has a one point advantage over our team. The method in which the pre-European tournament is played is that the first team automatically advances and the five best runners-up (out of the seven qualifiers) also advance, they will join the eight who advance to the quarterfinals of the previous championship (Serbia, Slovenia, France, Russia, Italy, Ukraine, Germany And Belgium) along with the four hosts of the championship (Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland) and a total of 24 teams that will compete in the European Championship games that will start later this year.
