Hapoel Be'er Sheva beat Red Star Belgrade 1:0 in the UEFA Champions League third qualifying round on Monday. The Israeli side held on after going down to ten men, with Zahid Ahmed's first-half strike proving decisive. It was a result that defied the statistical advantage the visitors carried all evening.
Ahmed put Hapoel ahead in the thirty-eighth minute, a moment that shifted the mood entirely. The game had been tight before that, with both sides testing each other. M. Abu Fani collected a yellow card early on, and the match settled into a rhythm that suggested goals would be hard to come by.
Then came the turning point. M. Baltaxa received a red card in the fifty-eighth minute, and by then Hapoel had to regroup. E. Peretz had a goal disallowed offside in the seventy-first minute, which would have extended the lead. The visitors pressed, but the reduced side weathered the storm.
Red Star dominated possession at 58 per cent and registered eight corners to three, yet they could not convert. They fired six shots on target compared to two, but the accuracy gap meant little in the end. Hapoel's defence switched off at the back when it mattered, and that is what counts.
The victory keeps Hapoel in the competition, while Red Star's European campaign comes to an end. The hosts had not won since their opening fixture, so this result changes everything for them. To be fair, the match was decided in those three or four moments, not the statistics.