Coach Ben Shimon seeks to improve team's performance after loss in friendly match against Hungary

Israel fell to Hungary  3-0 in an international friendly on Saturday night on a trio of early goals as Barnabas Varga scored a brace and added an assist to take the easy victory in Debrecen’s Nagyerdei Stadium.

In what was head coach Ran Ben Shimon’s debut on the blue-and-white sidelines, his squad was unable to create many chances and allowed the hosts to control the pace of play for the majority of the match with a makeshift lineup due to many players not being called into the training camp following the end of the domestic league season.

Rolland Sallai opened the scoring from in close after Varga headed the ball to the winger, who put it behind a helpless Omri Glazer for a 1-0 lead in the 11th minute. Less than 10 minutes later, defensive-back Bendegúz Bolla sent a magnificent through ball to Varga, who scored to double the advantage, while in the 22nd minute Sallai returned the favor to Varga as the latter headed the ball home for a 3-0 advantage.

Ben Shimon made a trio of early substitutions and changed the defensive tactics as Ofri Arad, Eden Shamir and Yoav Hoffmeister made way for Idan Nachmias, Ramzi Safouri and Roie Gordana, which stemmed the tide. At half-time, the Israeli bench boss tried to refresh the offense by bringing in Eliel Peretz for Gadi Kinda, which was followed by Guy Melamed entering the game for Tai Baribo, but none of the changes helped Israel on this night as the contest ended with Hungary cruising to the clean-sheet victory.

Learning curve

“We didn’t have an easy time tactically at the start of the game,” Ben Shimon said. “We could have begun this game better but it also could have ended worse. We will learn from these things and we made substitutions that really made a very big impact in how the game continued. I want to learn from these mistakes and this team has a chance to go very far.

“I saw some very positive things in the second half and I am learning and will learn very quickly. Against Belarus on Tuesday, this will be an entirely different game and very offensive. We will make some changes and will react quickly because there isn’t much time.”

Glazer spoke about the game that was for Israeli and also about the rescue of the hostages that the team heard just a few hours before the start of the contest.

“We didn’t begin the game well at all and they were able to score very easily. I feel we gave them way too much credit and while we are a new team we had to be better. In the second half we looked better and while this wasn’t the result that we wanted we can take some things from this game.

“We were thrilled about hearing that four hostages were rescued. We felt so good and it’s been so tough for our country we really needed this. We all want to thank the IDF and all the security forces for the operation and we send our deepest condolences to the family of the soldier who was killed.”