Miguel Vítor sat in the mixed zone in Baku on Tuesday night still trying to process what had just happened. "I feel very bad, this is a very difficult moment," the Hapoel Be'er Sheva captain said, moments after his side's Champions League play-off tie against Sabah slipped away in extra time. "We were seconds away from qualification."
Hapoel had led the aggregate contest for most of the night in the Azerbaijani capital, only for Sabah to complete a dramatic fightback, winning the second leg 5-2 after extra time to take the tie 6-4 on aggregate and reach the Champions League league phase for the first time in the club's history.
The Israeli champions were 2-1 up on the night and 4-2 clear on aggregate as late as the 74th minute, Igor Zlatanović's 10th-minute finish and a Guy Mizrahi strike on 61 minutes putting them within sight of a historic first Champions League league-phase berth. Sabah, though, refused to fold: Christian Nwachukwu pulled one back on 38 minutes, Umarali Rakhmonaliev leveled the night's score at 2-2 in the 74th, and Tellur Mutallimov struck deep into stoppage time - the 90+4th minute - to make it 3-2 on the night and level the aggregate score at 4-4, sending the tie to extra time.
The additional 30 minutes were one-sided. Patrick Orphe M'Bina headed Sabah in front for the first time in the tie in the 101st minute, and Joy-Lance Mickels added a fifth on 115 minutes to seal a 5-2 win on the night. Hapoel finished the match with nine men, Djibril Diop and Eliel Peretz both dismissed for second yellow cards in extra time, on 100 and 116 minutes respectively.
For Vítor personally, the night had already turned difficult before the collapse began. The 37-year-old center-back, who has captained the club since becoming an Israeli citizen, was withdrawn at half-time on medical advice. "The doctor decided it could affect my health. I felt dizzy and we decided it was risky," he explained. "I didn't want to come off."
The forced substitution clearly weighed on him as much as the result itself. "It's hard to replay those moments and reach these levels," Vítor said. "This may have been my last chance to reach the Champions League. This is a very difficult time."
He was candid about his team's performance on the night, even as he defended the effort behind it. "After they scored, they took the momentum and we didn't regain it. We didn't play well, but we were seconds from the Champions League," he said, before turning to the bigger picture: "We gave our best effort and created a positive campaign. We apologize, but we should look ahead." He pointed to Saturday's league fixture as the next order of business.
The elimination brings to an end an extraordinary European run for Hapoel Be'er Sheva, who had eliminated Víkingur Reykjavík and then Red Star Belgrade to reach the play-off round, and arrived in Baku with a 2-1 aggregate lead from a first leg won in Beersheba on August 19. A win, a draw, or even a single-goal defeat in Baku would have been enough to send them through to the Champions League proper for the first time in the club's history.
Instead, having led the tie for almost the entire night, they drop into the Europa League league phase - a significant consolation, but not the historic breakthrough that had briefly seemed within touching distance. Sabah, an Azerbaijani club founded less than a decade ago, will play in the Champions League league phase for the first time, while no Israeli club has featured in the competition's main phase since November 2022.
