{"id":28184,"date":"2008-11-12T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/this-is-our-first-serious-test-of-the-season-says-lior-eliyahu\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T08:25:44","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T05:25:44","slug":"this-is-our-first-serious-test-of-the-season-says-lior-eliyahu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/this-is-our-first-serious-test-of-the-season-says-lior-eliyahu\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThis is our first serious test of the season,\u201d says Lior Eliyahu."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><P><FONT face=Arial size=2>By Amy Samin<\/FONT><br \/><BR><\/P> <P><FONT face=Arial size=2>Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv took off for Greece this morning.<br \/> Forward Rodney White did not travel with the team; he has gone to the United States to be with his wife when she gives birth.<\/FONT><br \/><BR><\/P> <P><FONT face=Arial size=2>\u201cOlympiacos is a very strong team, so this will be our first serious test of the season,\u201d says Maccabi forward <B>Lior Eliyahu<\/B>, who doesn\u2019t see the match-up against Yotam Halperin and Nikola Vujcic as a big deal.<br \/> \u201cJust like we want to beat them, they want to beat us.<br \/> I wish Yotam the best of luck, except during our game against them.\u201d<\/FONT><br \/><BR><\/P> <P><FONT face=Arial size=2>Veteran Maccabi player <B>Tal Burstein<\/B> sees the upcoming game with Olympiacos as being tough one.<br \/> \u201cIt\u2019s hard to point out one or two things we can do to stop them.<br \/> They\u2019re a very talented and experienced team.<br \/> A victory for us in Greece won\u2019t be a sensation, but it won\u2019t be easy, either.\u201d<\/FONT><br \/><BR><\/P> <P><FONT face=Arial size=2>Head coach <B>Efy Birenboim<\/B> agrees.<br \/> \u201cOlympiacos has set the bar very high, but our goal is to arrive safely in Greece, to come home safely, and in between, to win the game.\u201d<br \/> Efy believes that Maccabi\u2019s loss to Olympiacos at home a month ago, during the farewell game for Nikola Vujcic, is irrelevant.<br \/> \u201cWe have changed since then; they\u2019ve changed a little as well.<br \/> It\u2019s a whole new ball game.\u201d<\/FONT><br \/><BR><\/P> <P><FONT face=Arial size=2>Point guard <B>Carlos Arroyo<\/B>: \u201cWe\u2019re going to be playing against a great Greek team, but I really don\u2019t care about their budget.\u201d<\/FONT><br \/><BR><\/P> <P><A href=\"mailto:samintranslations@yahoo.com\" target=_blank><FONT face=Arial color=#0000ff size=2><U>samintranslations@yahoo.com<\/U><\/FONT><\/A><FONT face=Arial size=2> <\/FONT><br \/><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv, without Rodney White who has flown to the U.S., arrived in Greece this morning.  \u201cA victory here won\u2019t be a sensation, but it won\u2019t be easy, either,\u201d says Tal Burstein.  Efy Birenboim adds, \u201cThe bar has been set very high.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-28184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":494785,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28184\/revisions\/494785"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28184"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=28184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}