Blue-and-white bows out of Euro qualifying

• Published date: 24 March 2024
• Author: JOSHUA HALICKMAN
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

Albert Gudmundsson scored a hat-trick to see the visitors through to the finals, where it will face Ukraine.Alon Hazan decided to keep arguably his best player in Oscar Gloukh on the bench to begin the game that saw Eran Zahavi give Israel a 1-0 lead via the penalty spot, but Gudmundsson drew Iceland even and Arnor Ingvi Traustason gave them the lead ahead of the break

Roy Revivo was sent off with a red card in the second half, but Zahavi had a chance to level the score once again via a penalty kick but this time the striker missed wide left.

That opened the door for Gudmundsson to score two more goals late in the game to secure the victory and send Israel packing.

Hazan's squad was supposed to head to play Bosnia and Herzegovina in a friendly after having fallen to Ukraine, but the game was canceled at the request of both associations due to the security situation in the Holy Land,When you are playing with 10 men and you are trying to advance in a knockout game, we had to rush forward," Hazan said. "The issue was that we were winning 1-0 and we didn't push ahead, but that's football. When you have a chance to draw even at 2-2 with 10 men it's obviously not great to come up short, but it is what it is."

Zahavi spoke about the defeat

"It's not pleasant as this is yet another chance that we blew. We were winning and then fell behind. We are just not good enough. We didn't deserve to advance and we saw all of our issues come out and we just didn't deserve to play in the next game. If we didn't go into the break behind, things may have looked different. The greats have missed penalties and I made one in the first half, but with 10 men we would have had a hard time anyways should we have drawn even."

"This is a huge disappointment for us," Gaby Kanichowsky said. "They were very physical and we couldn't find any solutions, we weren't good. This hurts a lot and is so disappointing I have no words to describe it. We played, but we have to remember that there are still his games being held and a war is going on which makes everything even more painful and sad, but this is the situation that we are in."

After an opening 30 ho-hum minutes of soccer that saw the majority of play in the midfield, Zahavi broke free and was pulled down in the box, good for a...