Doron Ben Dor 12/02/2021 09:22
San Menachem confronts Hapoel Haifa players at the end (Omri Stein)
Maccabi Haifa is currently supposed to work on two levels. The first is professional and is to continue preparing for the game in the second against Betar Jerusalem and the second – to prepare a line of defense for the disciplinary hearing next Wednesday following the placement of a number of players mentioned in referee Liran Liani’s report following the violent events in the derby.
The threats against San Menachem on his personal phone have crossed borders and the aim will be to calm the spirits, but to present an unambiguous line of defense. In Haifa they say: “San Menachem did not run towards the bench and he was in the field and then he told them ‘go home’, he was annoyed by them and they were the ones who started all the mess. “Our players naturally came to defend Sun. Such a thing happened to us in the past at a training camp in Austria when fans came to tease us and broke into the pitch and then a fight started and in the end they are the ones who were punished.”
“While defending, there are always beatings,” Maccabi Haifa added, “the players should not be punished collectively. Everyone is now looking to make headlines about us to give people material to punish us. “Sun said what he said in response to the previous derby and that Hapoel Haifa would not say that they did not tease us and told us to go home and we went down quietly.”
At the professional level, the players were given a day off and will resume preparations for the game tomorrow. Eid Habashi is injured and will not be on the roster like Nikita Rokavica and Yuval Ashkenazi. Chiron Cherry is set to return to training after recovering from an injury. Taleb Twataha will be examined and only then will the degree of severity in the back thigh muscle be ascertained.
