Israeli Youth Soccer Squad Beats Ireland in Tel Aviv

On Tuesday, an Israeli youth soccer team beat Ireland in Tel Aviv in a shootout, which earned it a spot in the under-21 European championships.

This victory is the third time that the men’s team from Israel will participate in the European championships in history, after it had qualified in 2007 and in 2013, when it hosted the tournament.

No goal in regular time

The regular playing time of 120 minutes saw no team score a goal, which meant that there would be a shootout.

This is when the Israeli team managed to defeat Ireland at the Bloomfield Stadium with the scorecard standing at 3-1.

The first goal of the night was scored by Conor Coventry from Ireland and it was the sole point for Ireland in the match.

The first goal for Israel was scored by Aden Kartsev. But, the key to the success of the Israeli team was its goalkeeper, Daniel Peretz.

He scored the second goal of the night for Israel and also blocked three attempts of the opponents to score.

The final point for Israel was scored by Osher Davida and this clinched the victory for the national team.

The reaction

Erez Kalfon, the chairman of the Professional Football Leagues in Israel, also congratulated the young team on their effort and said that the game had been a tense and exciting one.

He said that the team had once more showed that Israeli football can move forward with courage, spirit and a lot of faith.

The European Championships are scheduled to take place next summer in Romania and Georgia. Some of the top Israeli politicians also congratulated the team.

These include Defense Minister Benny Gantz and the Prime Minister of Israel, Yair Lapid.

Unfortunate incident

While the victory was indeed something to celebrate, there was one incident that did mar it for Israel. During the game, one player named Ziv Morgan was slapped by the team’s coach, Guy Luzon.

The video footage showed the coach had been arguing with the player in question and eventually ended up slapping his left cheek and then wagged a finger at him as well.

Luzon was questioned about the slap after the game was over, but the coach decided to play it down. He said that it had not been a slap and was just a pat.

The coach further said that people would know when he would really slap because those are real and this was just a pat. He added that it had just been out of love.

The under-19 soccer team of Israel had suffered defeat at the hands of England in Israel back in June by 3-1, which was the first-ever European soccer final for the country.

Israel had defeated France in the semifinals 2-1, which had been considered a major upset, in order to advance to the final.

In other news, the Tel Aviv Watergen Open has also kicked off this week, with some of the big names in tennis participating in the tournament.