Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Slavkovski: I am Macedonian
Picture worth a thousand words...
The president of the Macedonian Agency for Youth and Sport, Ivica Georgievski visited Goran Slavskovski in Milan. On the meeting Slavskovski ensured him that he wants to play for Macedonia. Goran Slavkovski said: My name is not Svensson or Larsson and I'm not blue-yellow. My name is Goran Slavkovski and my parents are from Macedonia, I am Macedonian, my heart is in yellow and red colour and that's why I'm gonna play for Macedonia.Labels: News and Information
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Goran Slavskovski will play for Macedonia
One of the most talented young players in Europe to play for MacedoniaFinally confirmed
After a year of doubts, meetings and begging, finally Slavkovski's family confirmed that he chose the Macedonian national team. The coach of the Macedonian U21 national team confirmed that Goran Slavskovski agreed to take part of the U21 friendly match against Albania that will be played on 28, March.Everybody wanted Slavkovski
Swedish-born by Macedonian parents Goran Slavkovski is raising heads all over Europe, already earning the nickname “Ibrahimovic the Second.” Born April 8, 1989, in Skravlinge, Sweden, the 17-year old Slavkovski shares much in common with Serie A’s Zlatan Ibrahimovic. For starters, both players began their careers with Swedish side Malmo FF, and before that Rosengard club FBK Balkan, and both players have family origins in the former Yugoslavia. But this is just the tip of the iceberg as Slavkovski, like his childhood role model Ibrahimovic, currently finds himself at Italy’s FC Internazionale Milano, hoping to further develop the goal-scoring prowess he has shown thus far. The fight for Slavkovski also transcended the European club level, with recent media outlets reportedly alleging a “war” between the Macedonian, Swedish, and Croatian football federations to woo the youngster to their respective national teams. Slavkovski has stated it would be an honor to play for Macedonia, and even received an official invitation from Macedonia’s Prime Minister to discuss his possible future with the FFM.
Labels: News and Information
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Pandev on the top of Europe
Once again the best football player from Lazio draws the European attention
With the 2 goals scored this weekend and the win that he brought to Lazio over Torino, Goran Pandev drew the European attention and was named as man of the match, elected in the team of the round by the Italian medias, Eurosport...Pandev keeps Lazio amongst Serie A top five
Goran Pandev was twice on target as the Bincocelesti edged closer to the final Champions League place. Pandev opened the scoring in the 11th minute, the striker opting to clip the ball over Toro keeper Christian Abbiati when a powerful strike was expected by all. The Macedonian sealed the win with his second on the hour mark after Stefano Mauri had played him in with a lovely reverse pass. Pandev did the rest, finishing with typical aplomb to give Delio Rossi's side all three points.
Going for the record
For the second time in his career Goran Pandev scored two goals on one match in the Serie A. With the two goals against Torino, Pandev now has 7 goals scored this season in Lazio's jersey in the Serie A matches. On 15 matches from the end of the season it's very likely to expect from him to improve his personal record of 11 goals scored in the last season.
The great form of the leader of the Macedonian national team and current Lazio best player is another positive factor for the whole atmosphere of the Macedonian football fans on a month before the most important match for the Macedonian NT in the EURO 2008 qualifications away to Croatia.
Labels: News and Information
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Stevica Ristic joins the Asian Champion
The best striker of the Macedonian league joins the Korean club Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors
Stevica Ristic, the best striker of the Macedonian league for the last 3 seasons and the new name in the Macedonian national team, joined the Koren club Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors, last years winner of the Asian Champions league.Long awaited move
Stevica Ristic, the 24 years old Serbian born striker signed 2 years long contract with the K-League team Jeonbuk. Born on 23/05/1982, Stevica Ristic affirmed himself in the last 3,5 seasons spent in the Macedonian League. He scored 103 goals for his club Sileks and was the best striker in the Macedonian league. Many foreign big clubs were interested to see him in their squads but the moves to the clubs like: Greuter Furth, Krilya Sovietov, Steaua, Lokeren... all failed because of the big transfer fee that Sileks asked for him. But this time the Korean team was very determined to have him and Sileks were not able to reject their offer, 6 months before his contract expiration.
New member of the Macedonian national team
Stevica Ristic is born in Serbia but with Macedonian origins. After 3 years spent in Macedonia he got the Macedonian passport and it was question of time when will he have the debut in the Macedonian national team. And it was the 7th of February, 2007 - the date that changed his life. Srecko Katanec gave him the chance to be in the starting line-up for the friendly match against Albania and Stevica Ristic made great use of his debut appearance for the Macedonian national side by scoring the winning goal. This goal had big effect on his future career because the next day many offers from big clubs came on his address and the best one came from the 2006 AFC Champions League winners Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors.
Labels: Transfers and rumors
Artim Sakiri signed for Vaduz
The Macedonian legend will spend the next 6 months in the Swiss Challenge League
After some period without a club and no competitive football Artim Sakiri signed for the Liechtenstein club Vaduz which competes in the Swiss Challenge League. The period without a competitive football cost him the place in the Macedonian national team and it's unlikely that at age of 33 the attacking midfielder will ever get back in the form that he was in his good old days. In his rich career he played in many leagues and gained big experience in clubs like Vardar, Halmstads, TB Berlin, HIT Gorica, Malatyaspor, CSKA Sofia, West Bromwich Albion, AaB and his last club was Inter Turku from Finland.Sakiri played 73 times for the Macedonian national team and scored 15 goals and we'll remember him as the player who retired David Seaman after scoring the fantastic goal from a corner kick against England in 2002.
Labels: Transfers and rumors
Friday, February 09, 2007
Aco Stojkov signs for Debrecen
Macedonian striker finally leaves Partizan
The 24 years old striker finally managed to leave Partizan after the agonizing 7 months with no first team footballStojkov signs for the Hungarian champion Debrecen VSC
Earlier this season Aco Stojkov was announced as the biggest reinforcement for Partizan but coach Jesic was ungracious for him and Stojkov was left without a first team football for 7 months. This cost him the place in the Macedonian national team when Srecko Katanec left him out because of his non-playing form. Finally today this agonizing period came to end when he signed for the Hungarian champion Debrecen VSC.
Aco Stojkov born on 29 April, 1983 was proclaimed as one of the biggest Macedonian future stars. At age of only 17 years Stojkov together with Goran Pandev were transfered to Inter Milan where they won the youth league title. Before joining Partizan he was loaned to Italian lower league teams and La Louviere from Belgium where he scored 7 goals in 14 matches. He has 25 appearances and 10 goals for the U21 and with the 4 goals on 20 matches he was valuable member of the Macedonian senior national team. By signing for Debrecen a quick return in playing for is expected from him and we should see him back in the national team in short time.
Labels: Transfers and rumors
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Albania - Macedonia 0:1
Good first half, but awful second half
Macedonia won the friendly match away to Albania as Stevica Ristic made great use out of his 1st appearance for the MKD national side by scoring the winning goal. The Macedonian striker netted the only goal in this friendly, leaving the Croatian chief at helm of the “Black Eagles” Otto Baric to witness his team's struggle for an equalizer resulting in nothing but missed chances and a defeat.Solid performance in the first half
Macedonians started the first half with attacking formation and it wasn't a big surprise to see them dominating the pitch during that period. The striking duo Naumoski-Ristic, supported by Pandev had many chances and it was in the 33rd minute that the crucial moment of the match took place. Stevica Ristic got in the chance and really used it well by signing in the score-sheet after being picked up by Pandev's assist in a counter attack operation . The Macedonian international with Serb roots had another good chance as the game continued, but his effort same as Pandev's free kick and then Noveski's shot that even shook the woodwork didn't bring any changes on the score board. During this period the Albanian team struggled with the organization of their game and the Black Eagles had almost no serious chances to jeopardize Nikoloski at the Macedonian goal.
Awful second half
Considering this match was only a friendly, Srecko Katanec used it for testing all his players. That's why he given an opportunity to Polozhani, Tasevski, Pacovski, Maznov and Jancevski at the beginning of the second period. However those substitutions, when Pandev, Naumoski, Ristic, Shumulikoski and Nikolovski left the pitch, were a crucial fact why the performance of the Macedonians gone downwards. The newly entered players struggled to hold to the ball and organize some offensive actions, leaving the pitch completely to their opponent's domination. The Albanians on the other side, have made a very good impression in the second half, managing to create many good chances to score. However the goalkeepers on both ends were the "ones to take the blame" for the low amount of goals at this game because they made some excellent saves.
Srecko Katanec sent off
The awful refereeing by the Italian referee Bertini also marked this match. He made many mistakes, especially against the Macedonians. That's why the Slovenian coach at Macedonian post, Srecko Katanec was complaining all the time and in the 83rd minute the Ref showed him the red card and the former Slovenian National Side chief had to leave the pitch.
Albania - Macedonia 0:1 (0:1)
Goals: Stevica Ristic 33'
Macedonia:
Nikoloski(45' Pacovski) - Noveski, Sedloski, Mitreski - Lazarevski, A.Mitreski, Shumulikoski(73' Jancevski), Grozdanovski - Pandev(45' Polozhani) - Ristic(61' Maznov), Naumoski(45' Tasevski)
Labels: Macedonian National Team
Albania - Macedonia betting preview
A short preview and advice for betting:The match is friendly and both coaches will use this match for testing players, so the prediction is:
Good luck
Labels: Betting
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Scandal after scandal
Here's mu column written for Nogomania.com, the biggest Slovenian football website:http://www.nogomania.com/Default.asp?podrocje=32&novica=6720
Scandal after scandal
Macedonia hired Srecko Katanec as coach… Macedonian national team playing great… 0:0 in England… Macedonia in the top 50 on the FIFA ranking list…
You must have reacted: “WOW, the Macedonian football has improved a lot”, or maybe even: “What a good work by the Football Federation of Macedonia (FFM)”. Yeah, I know you’ve reacted like that and I know that everyone outside of Macedonia and everyone who’s far from the reality in Macedonia have reacted like that and have the best opinion about the current situation of the football in Macedonia.
But what actually is going on in here? Hmmm… Where should I begin? Do you have time? How many pages I’m allowed to use for this column?
OK, I’ll try to be short. I’ll go back in 2004, 13th October, Andorra – Macedonia 1:0. No, it’s not a typing mistake, the match really ended with 1:0. Yes, Andorra won. In the country where a hotel worker, baker, police officer… are playing for the NT, they have only one single win in the whole history of the football played there. Can you imagine the shame? The only win in the history of Andorra is over Macedonia. And only couple of weeks later the reports came that one bookmaker from Asia and one from Portugal have bankrupted after huge amount of money staked on the big odds for Andorra’s win over Macedonia. Hmmm… What actually was going on there? No one knows and no one will know and nothing will be ever proven. No one actually saw that match. Strange but the national TV had no live coverage for that match and the next day we only saw a video of the goal.
Let’s skip the other smaller scandals that happened in between and move to the near past. I don’t want even to start about the situation of youth football in Macedonia or the lower leagues. The quality of the Macedonian First League is on very low level so you can imagine what happens in the lower leagues and there’s no program or plan for advancement of the youth schools and youth players.
We all knew in what miserable situation are the domestic competitions but couple of weeks ago we all got shocked when the government’s labor inspection body reported that 7 out of 12 clubs did not have a single player registered as a professional player although all players in the Macedonian First League are playing professionally. The players are instead playing illegally, they do not have contracts and the clubs are not paying social insurance for them. Normally the FFM has given up taking action against the clubs because to be effective they would have to close down almost all of the clubs. But the question here is on what basis did the FFM give licences to the clubs for playing in the European competitions. For example in the most famous Macedonian club Vardar, the inspectors discovered that there are only 10 people employed and all of them are coaches and the club has no contracts with players and wages and social insurance hasn't been paid since January 2006. But still FFM gave Vardar a license so they can play in European competitions. Pobeda (owned by FFM’s president Haralampie Hadzi-Risteski) has only 6 employees and no one of them is a player. They have 22 players, 4 of them are foreigners and all are without professional contracts. Wages and social insurance hasn't been officially payed since 2002 at Pobeda… If only UEFA knew what kind of clubs are playing in their competitions…
But this was just a beginning of the shocks that the Macedonian football fans “survived” in this period. Only the next day the daily sports newspaper “Makedonski Sport” revealed that the Secretary General of the FFM Lazar Mitrevski was employed on his position with fake diploma from faculty. Than, trying to escape from this he made even bigger criminal acts by destroying his fake diploma and placing a new diploma (from lower education level) into his records. But normally all this was discovered by the Macedonian police and now they have pressed charges against him.
But wait, the scandals didn’t stop there. In the next few days again “Makedonski Sport” revealed another big scandal. FFM have ordered 4500 football kits with false PUMA (FFM’s official sponsor) trademarks from a sports equipment factory in Prilep (the home town of FFM’s president).
The Macedonian police decided to investigate the cases and they closed down and searched the FFM offices on 15 January and questioned some of its managers for hours at the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A week later UEFA and FIFA wrote the Macedonian Minister of Internal Affairs complaining that Macedonia had violated the principles of autonomy that applies throughout the sports movement. But couple of days later they all got it clear that the Macedonian police is just chasing criminals and the president and the secretary general are not immune.
On of those desperate moves for salvation by the leadership of the FFM was the support from Srecko Katanec. I don’t know how they managed to manipulate him but in the first days of the scandals Srecko Katanec gave his support for the leadership of the FFM and said that he will leave the Macedonian NT if the current leadership leaves FFM. But couple of days later Katanec got it all clear and saw who he’s dealing with and he “soften” in his statements by saying that he’s not well familiar with the situation in FFM and he didn’t care so much and he’s concentrated on his job with the NT.
Finally on February 01, the secretary general resigned. Mitrovski said he was quitting to protect the federation but we all know that the FFM can’t be protected any more. Changes in the FFM must come and it must happen sooner! People who care about the Macedonian football have already started taking action and an initiative committee for changes in the FFM was formed. Former Macedonian football players, referees and coaches form the committee and they work for immediate changes and saving the football in Macedonia.
As I said changes in the Macedonian football must come sooner because “the thing” that is currently played on the stadiums in Macedonia and organized by the Football Fakers of Macedonia (FFM) can’t be called football at the moment.
Labels: Football Essays, Football Federation of Macedonia
Monday, February 05, 2007
Gjurovski: Macedonia is my choice
Mario Gjurovski made the decisionThe big talent hopes that soon he'll wear the Macedonian jersey, following the steps of his father Milko and uncle Boshko
Bright future in front of Mario
Mario Gjurovski is one of the most talented players currently playing in the Serbian league. He drew the attention on him with the great performances for his club Bezanija. Born in Belgrade, Serbia but with Macedonian origin there were many big doubts about his choice for the national team. The older football fans remember the great performances of his father Milko and his uncle Boshko. Serbian sport journalists admire his skills comparing him like a mix of his father's Milko attacking and his unlces Boshko defensive skill. Mario Gjurovski is a player that every coach would like to have in his squad.Red and yellow jersey is Mario's choice
For couple of days now Mario is in Macedonia with his club Bezanija on their winter preparations. In the past few weeks there were a lot of speculations about his future because some bigger clubs like Crvena Zvezda, Partizan and Panathinaikos are interested for him, but Mario brought another very important decision for his future:
- I'm here in Macedonia for a couple of days and I can say that I feel like home. This is the country of where my origins are and the country that I want to play for, said Gjurovski for "Makedonski Sport". I think that I can help the Macedonian NT together with Pandev, Stojkov...
This is real good news for all the football fans from Macedonia and we should gladly expect to see him in Katanec' squad in some of the next matches for the EURO 2008 qualifications.
Labels: News and Information
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Lazar Mitrovski resigns
The Secretary General of the Football Federation of Macedonia resigns
After all the scandals and affairs in which the leading people of the Football Federation of Macedonia (FFM) were involved, the Secretary General Lazar Mitrovski finally resigned todayScandal after scandal
It all started couple of weeks ago when the Macedonian labor inspection revealed the illegal working of almost all Macedonian football clubs. And in the next few days more scandals were revealed by the daily sports newspaper "Makedonski Sport" when they publish how the Secretary General of the FFM, Lazar Mitrovski was appointed at his job with fake faculty diploma, and than followed by the big scandal about the falsifications of the PUMA equipment made by the FFM.
In those days the struggling leadership of the Football Federation of Macedonia involving the President Haralampie Hadzi-Risteski and the Secretary General Lazar Mitrovski tried some ways to escape from the responsibility for all those scandals. They tried to get the support and some immunity by UEFA and FIFA. But it didn't took so long for them to understand that the Ministry of Interior is only doing their job when they fight against criminal and they are not trying to interfere in the work of FFM.
Mitrovski resigns
The problems in the FFM are drown to the boiling point. The Ministry of Interior have questioned the President, the Secretary General and many other people and witnesses involved in those cases and the Macedonian Police pressed criminal charges against Lazar Mitrovski, Secretary General of the FFM for suspected use of forged university diploma during his electing in 2003 and also suspected to have destroyed the forged diploma last year, in fear of being discovered. There are no doubts that the police has hard evidences against him and he;ll get charged for all his actions. So it was question of time when will those people leave the FFM and finally today Lazar Mitrovski resigned.
But this is only the first step of the big changes that should follow later. Yesterday an initiative committee for changes in the FFM was formed. The committee is formed by former Macedonian football players, referees and coaches and they work for immediate changes and saving the football in Macedonia.
Labels: Football Federation of Macedonia
Goce Toleski signs for Burghausen
The Macedonian striker moves in Bundesliga 2
Goce Toleski the 29 years old striker and former member of the Macedonian national team will try to help Wacker Burghausen to survive in the German Bundesliga 2.One of the best strikers in the Macedonian league and former member of the Macedonian national team, yesterday signed for the member of the German Bundesliga 2 team Wacker Burghausen. This year Burghausen are struggling in the fight against relegation and Goce Toleski is their new reinforcement of the attack. Goce Toleski has been part of the Macedonian national team for 16 times and scored 1 goal. This year he had great performances in Renova's jersey where he managed to score 13 goals in the 18 rounds played so far in the first half of the season of the Macedonian First League.
The former member of Rabotnicki, Napredok and Tikvesh so signed for Wacker Burghausen until June 2008.
Labels: Transfers and rumors
