A red card in extra time breaks Hapoel — and hands Sabah the tie

Sabah Baku beat Hapoel Be'er Sheva 5-2 after extra time, but the final scoreline hides how close this tie was until one moment tipped it. Across two legs the sides could barely be separated — Hapoel had won the first leg 2-1, and after 90 minutes of the second the aggregate stood level at 4-4. What broke the deadlock was not a piece of brilliance but a second yellow card: Djibril Diop was sent off at the start of extra time, and a contest that had been finely balanced for over three hours suddenly wasn't.

The regulation 90 was a genuine back-and-forth. Igor Zlatanović had put Hapoel ahead on ten minutes — moments after seeing an earlier effort ruled out for offside — before Christian Nwachukwu levelled for Sabah on 38. Guy Mizrahi restored Hapoel's lead on 61, only for Umarali Rahmonaliyev to equalise again on 74. Then Tellur Mutallimov struck at 90 to make it 3-2 on the night and 4-4 on aggregate, dragging an exhausting tie into extra time with everything still to play for.

Diop's dismissal on 100 minutes changed the geometry of the game entirely. Reduced to ten and already drained by two hours of football, Hapoel could not hold. Patrick Mbina struck almost immediately, on 101, and Joy-Lance Mickels added a fifth on 115 to settle it. What had been an even tie became a 5-2 win and a 6-4 aggregate, the extra man doing in fifteen minutes what neither side had managed in the two hours before. The turning point was disciplinary, not tactical.

Sabah will not care how it came; advancing is advancing, and they showed the composure to punish a numerical advantage when it finally arrived. But the honest reading is that this tie hinged on a booking. For Hapoel, having led the first leg and matched Sabah for 100 minutes of the second, the sending-off is the cruelest way to exit — a reminder that in tightly poised European nights, discipline can matter as much as quality, and a single card can undo three hours of parity.