Maccabi Next Urban Haifa to replace KB Peja in Group A of Delasport Balkan League

Maccabi "Next Urban" Haifa will be the 12th teams in Delasport Balkan League for this season. After last week KB Peja was taken out of the competition, the Sports Director - Mr. Shay Shtriks, started working on finding another team to replace them in order to balance the groups and for all the teams to have equal number of games and not to put some of them in disadvantage.

As this week Mr. Shtriks is in Israel, he and the management of Maccabi "Next Urban" Haifa contacted each other and following a few days of discussion, came to an agreement that the team will join the competition as the 12th participant replacing KB Peja.

Maccabi "Next Urban" Haifa will be placed in Group A alongside fellow Israeli side Hapoel Nufar Energy Galil Elion, BC Balkan, BC Levski 2014, KK Kumanovo 2009 and KK Navico Akademija FMP. The management of Delasport Balkan League will now start its work on fixing the program and it will be announced in the next few days. There will be no change in the competition system both in Stage 1 and the ones to follow. The top 4 teams from each group will advance to Stage 2.

Maccabi "Next Urban" Haifa took part in Delasport BIBL last season as well but lost all four of its games in Group B against Ironi Rain Nahariya and Hapoel Gilboa Galil. At the end of the season in Israel, the team was relegated to the Second division but the ambitions are to return to the top flight as soon as possible.

Maccabi "Next Urban" Haifa is one of the historic teams in Israel, founded back in 1954 and a part of the first ever championship in the country. The only title so far came back in 2013 when they defeated Maccabi Tel Aviv in the final.