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| The Israel National Basketball Team (eurobasket2013) |
EuroBasket 2013:
The basketball team will tip off its EuroBasket Slovenia 2013 campaign this afternoon (at 15:30) when it takes on a very weak Great Britain side. The Israeli's are all set, with star player, Omri Casspi of the Houston Rockets, in top form. Also expected to make a huge contribution throughout the campaign is Lior Eliyahu who recently left Maccabi Tel Aviv and became a free-agent. The 28-year-old 203cm forward will hope to impress in Slovenia and attract a top European team or even one from the NBA. The national team's roster also includes 3 very experienced players in Yotam Halperin, Yaniv Green and Ido Kozikaro who have each played over 140 times for their country. Meanwhile the Brits aren't really in shape and in their last warm-up game they fell 100-47 in the hands of the Spanish. Another strange aspect of the game is that Britain's assistant coach, Guy Goodes, is an Israeli! the bad thing about that though from Israel's point of view is that their coaches won't be able to scream out orders in Hebrew mid-game as they are used to doing. Tomorrow (Thursday) afternoon the national team will face Ukraine and on Friday night, France.
FIFA World Cup 2014 qualifiers:
As for the football team, they host Azerbaijan at Ramat Gan Stadium on Saturday night (at 21:00) in a vital world cup qualifier that should easily be won by the Israeli's despite all their recent injury problems. Quality strikers is the only thing that the team isn't short of in any way with Eliran Atar, Elyaniv Barda, Itai Shechter and Shimon Abuhatzira all ready to contribute as much as they can. The sad fact is that only 5 of the 11 that started in the historic 3-3 draw with Portugal in March are available for the match an even among the not injured 5, only 2 are fully fit - Eitan Tibi and Bibras Natkho who are both expected to start against Azerbaijan.
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