{"id":507859,"date":"2021-09-09T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-09T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8080\/the-situation-is-challenging-the-key-is-the-fans\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T12:16:30","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T09:16:30","slug":"the-situation-is-challenging-the-key-is-the-fans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/the-situation-is-challenging-the-key-is-the-fans\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;The situation is challenging. The key is the fans&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"responsive-video-container\" style=\"position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.25%; height: 0; overflow: hidden; max-width: 100%; margin-bottom: 20px;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/iIpqh0BpQr0\" style=\"position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div dir=\"ltr\"> \t<span style=\"font-size:14px;\">In light of the team&#8217;s multiple cases of Covid-19 infections and the forced changes to the schedule, we decided it&#8217;s time to clarify some burning matters. Roy Gladstone, VP of Communications at Maccabi Playtika Tel-Aviv, responded live to fans&#8217; questions on the club&#8217;s Facebook page, while Maccabi&#8217;s sports director, Nikola Vujcic, also joined during the broadcast to spread some optimism despite the current situation.<\/p>\n<p> \t&#8220;Yes, we are in a bit of a mess,&#8221; Vujicic said. &#8220;We won&#8217;t have a normal pre-season and probably will not have the players before September 20 for a first-team training. It is very challenging, and we&#8217;ll need to come up with solutions while remaining patient. But in the end, I&#8217;m confident that we&#8217;ll be fine.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> \tVujcic believes the fans &#8211; more specifically the players&#8217; reaction to them &#8211; could serve as a &#8220;mental cure.&#8221; &#8220;I have one hope &#8211; that we will get our fans back to a full arena,&#8221; he said. &#8220;They can help us overcome this situation because the players always play better when there&#8217;s a full crowd behind them. Two years ago, we were undefeated at home because of our great fans. That&#8217;s the key for us also now&#8221;.<\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maccabi&#8217;s Sports director, Nikola Vujcic, joined a live Facebook chat with the yellow fans and delivered an optimistic message in light of the tough pre-season: &#8220;If we play in front of a full arena, we can get out of this mess&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":507858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"custom_author":[],"class_list":["post-507859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-54"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507859","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=507859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507861,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507859\/revisions\/507861"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507859"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maccabi.co.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=507859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}