Only just a few months ago, Ljuboten achieved a spot in the second round of the UEFA Women’s Champions League qualifiers. The achievement was the furthest a Macedonian women’s team had ever reached in European competition and with Ljuboten looking to strengthen itself even further, there was hope that the scene would get even stronger. Now however all that hard work is seemingly been undone, with the club announcing that their 4-1 win against Kamenica Sasa being their final game for their women’s team.

“Today was the last match for many players at ZFK Ljuboten, the last for the internationals and the last for many things.

“After the most recent displays on the pitch of which we are sure were anything but sporting, alongside the decisions made by the football federation made it clear to us that there is no room for success for those who invest honestly and want progress in our sport.

“Everyone in Tetovo loses, the national team from which we have 10 players loses, football loses and with it dissolves a brand that is known within women’s football in the region and beyond.” read part of Ljuboten’s statement.

The decision to dissolve the club comes after the controversial game between them and Struga based side AS United. Ljuboten abandoned the match in the 75th minute when the club’s president Dragoljub Jovanovski instructed the players to leave the pitch due to the refereeing decisions carried out by the officials for that match. This would then result in the fixture to be given as a forfeit win for AS United, along with a nine point deduction and fine for Ljuboten after a disciplinary committee looked at the case.

There are valid concerns in both ways. The refereeing in the AS United - Ljuboten match was without question poor, with multiple goalscoring chances for Ljuboten unsubstantially being ruled out. The final nail in the coffin was another such case where a seemingly good goal was called offside, which prompted the club president to storm onto the pitch and force the players off. The call was most certainly incorrect but Ljuboten leaving the game made the matter much worse as they would most certainly have received the forfeit and the points deduction regardless of the quality of officiating.

Ljuboten already had much to be aggrieved about this season. They have slipped up in the 1.ZMFL, falling down to second with losses to Skopje 2014 and Brera Tiverija. It’s a tough pill to swallow for the Tetovo-based side who had thought themselves to be untouchable given the utterly dreadful state of many other clubs in Macedonian women’s football. With Ljuboten being one of a few clubs to ever give out professional contracts in Macedonian women’s football, the reality was that if they finished anywhere but top spot, it could have been disastrous for them.

In the end none of that matters now. Women’s football in Tetovo already suffered one setback when Shkendija dissolved just before the start of the 2024/25 season and to now lose their best club is an outright catastrophe. Though the FFM and Ljuboten will now needlessly point fingers at one another for each others transgressions, women’s football will have to hope that someone can carry on where the “Blues” left off. There is a gaping hole now left for clubs to cross, the question now becomes which one will do so first?

It has only been a few days into the March international window but in just that short period the new manager of the Macedonian national team has found himself at the center of attention. Having lost the World Cup playoff against Denmark in brutal fashion, many including some of Sedloski’s supporters have turned on the coach and are already calling for his head just one game into his tenure. Not only did Macedonia look tactically hopeless in attack and defense against the Danish, Sedloski’s selections for not just the initial 26-man squad and his lineup were controversial for many reasons.

To start with his picks for the national team, Sedloski opted to not pick a single natural right back with the exception of Egzon Bejtullai who had been out of the national team for a number of years. This left many perplexed as to what formation Macedonia would even play against Denmark with most seeing this as going back to three in defense similar to what former manager Igor Angelovski devised in his tenure.

The right back concerns also opened the door open to ask questions of Stefan Ristovski’s fate with Macedonia. Ristovski departed the national team after Macedonia lost 6-0 to England during EURO 2024 qualifying, stating that his reasons were down to disagreements with then manager Blagoja Milevski. His absence was immediately felt in the national team with Milevski spending much of the next few international breaks trying to find suitable replacements before landing on Stefan Despotovski, Bojan Ilievski and Stefan Ashkovski. Even with the election of new FFM president Masar Omeragikj and Goran Pandev as sporting director, Ristovski has still yet to make a return to the national team, but whether that is now down to his own refusal or his poor form for Sarajevo remains unanswered.

And then there was the lineup to start the game. Though it was presented as a back three, during the game the shape of the team resembled more of a 4-2-3-1 with Sebastian Herrera dropping back to be support on the left whilst Andrej Stojchevski would tuck into the right side of defense. The middle would consist of Jani Atanasov and Eljif Elmas who would both serve as deep playmaking options whilst Enis Bardhi stayed up front of them to help the attack. And finally at the front the team would have Churlinov, Qamili and Rastoder to create both width and options through Rastoder’s height and Churlinov’s speed.

I would try to give this formation and lineup selection the benefit of the doubt, but honestly it just comes as bizarre. For starters, picking both Rastoder and Qamili to start up front was always going to cause issues. Qamili is already one of the most unpopular members of the national team for a plethora of reasons but to put it simply, he had not proven himself capable of delivering when it mattered as proven by his tragic miss against the Faroe Islands. This was exacerbated by the fact Sedloski opted to bench both Aleksandar Trajkovski and Bojan Miovski for the game, one of which was Macedonia’s top active goal scorer and the other was Macedonia’s top goal scorer for the qualifiers. I won’t even be going into Rastoder’s inclusion, who has yet to score a goal in all six of his national team appearances.

Then comes the decisions made in the midfield. Leaving Eljif Elmas, one of the most tricky players to defend against, to fight a midfield battle against Denmark is like sending a pre-Punic Wars Roman general to fight a naval battle against Horatio Nelson. What’s more is that playing him alongside both Jani Atanasov and Enis Bardhi was going to end up terribly because neither of the three are really renowned for their defensive capabilities even if Atanasov is technically a “defensive midfielder”.

And then you have the defense which probably suffered the biggest headaches due to the callups made by Sedloski. With the way the team shaped up Andrej Stojchevski would have to do the brunt work on the right side of the pitch. The only problem was that Stojchevski, and I mean this in no uncertain terms, is not a right back. Matter of fact the most capable player to do Stojchevski’s duties on the pitch would’ve been Egzon Bejtullai who sat pretty on the bench for a chance that would never come. This meant that whilst Herrera was able to do his duties on the left without many issues, there was a serious struggle on Macedonia’s right to not just defend against Denmark’s attacks but also to create attacks from that side.

After looking at each part of the team we can conclude that Macedonia neither had the attacking capabilities to threaten Denmark, nor were defensively ready to keep the Danish attack at bay. So when Macedonia eventually conceded four goals to the Danes on their on path to the World Cup, the fault doesn’t fall on the players but on the coach who created such a hopeless system in the first place. And sure, someone will say “he only had three months to prepare so its unfair to criticize him for such”, need I also remind everyone that the only reason we’re in this situation is because the FFM did not want to trust Blagoja Milevski with this assignment.

Milevski is a very controversial figure for his time with the national team. Tactically he is sound and on numerous occasions during his tenure he managed to get the best of better opposition. It’s safe to say that his tenure as not just the senior team manager but also the manager of the U21s side in the past have helped build a perception that Macedonia are a better team than they actually are. However in mentioning this it would also be negligent of me to not talk about his disastrous man-management after taking over the senior side. I already mentioned his spats with Stefan Ristovski but there were also rumors that Milevski had issues with other players like Arijan Ademi and Boban Nikolov who after some time would never reappear in his selections.

Current sporting director of Macedonia’s national teams Goran Pandev had stated in the past his dissatisfaction with Milevski and his management of the senior side, but had little to no choice but to keep him because there were no viable options to replace him when Pandev took the job. However when Milevski’s contract was set to expire and with Macedonia’s most recent humiliation to Wales the most recent memory on everyone’s minds, the decision was made to finally let Milevski go and search for new options. The pool of managers that could take on the mountain of work was once again barren but the FFM opted to take Goce Sedloski with a deal that would see him be both Macedonia and Vardar manager with him set to leave his club role at the end of the season.

As I’ve already written previously about Sedloski, whilst his form with Vardar and many more club sides has been good, his biggest struggle has always been European fixtures where he would be tactically incapable of adapting and on multiple occasions would see his teams lose in second legs despite a great advantage. It wasn’t hard to guess that a similar struggle might befall him if he were to have taken the job as national team manager but being proven right in such a way after just a single game was beyond what I was expecting.

And despite everything I’ve said so far the nail in the coffin for this entire week has proven to be Aleksandar Trajkovski’s sudden retirement from the national team. Trajkovski as mentioned before is Macedonia’s top active goal scorer and is ranked second in the list of all time goal scorers only behind Goran Pandev. Though many can point at Trajkovski’s lackluster club career, he has been indispensable at times for Macedonia. No one can simply forget that goal in Palermo, and his goal against Kazakhstan in Astana was crucial in Macedonia winning in a game where they were already on the backfoot.

Trajkovski’s departure came after not appearing on the starting lineup or off the bench for Macedonia in their game against Denmark, meaning that he closes out his international career with 98 appearances and 24 goals. This was also compounded by Trajkovski’s wife coming out on social media in defense of her husband stating that all she wanted “was for her husband’s efforts over many years to be respected.” Though Sedloski has defended his decision not to start Trajkovski by saying “he was not fit enough”, it seems odd that you would not at least give him a chance off the bench when everyone is aware how much of an x-factor he can be for the national team.

With a friendly against Ireland and plenty of international breaks before EURO 2028 qualifying begins ahead, Sedloski has time to fix all the glaring issues in his system and in his management of the national team. However with such a sour start there will be serious questions about his capabilities for the foreseeable future that he’d like to have avoided so early on. After all this is the biggest job of his management career and if he does not succeed its unlikely that he will be taken as seriously as he used to be within Macedonian football.

Let me start this article off with a bit of context about myself. I was born in a small town around the south of Macedonia called Prilep but I have spent most of my life in the country’s biggest city and capital Skopje. My dad, god rest his soul, was a huge Formula 1 fan whilst my mom would only ever really be interested in sports like figure scatting when they were on. This is to say that my household, including my younger brother, have no interest in football even dismissing the sport outright.

Despite all that, I somehow found myself attached to the sport even if I was no good at actually playing it. I was always surrounded by kids that loved the sport, that played it and that talked about so it felt natural that I followed suit. Then came the question of which team I should support. As a younger kid I previously had favored Manchester United, though that quickly faded once I’d realized how little I felt attached to them. If I wanted to find a team I’d actually cheer for, I had to look inwards into what Macedonian football had to offer.

Living in Skopje, for most it would make perfect sense to support the biggest team there, Vardar. It had the most trophies, it was still very much at the top of Macedonian football and it was achieving things most teams couldn’t at the time. Heck, the first ever football game I attended was Vardar’s opener in the Europa League against Zenit. But still I just didn’t feel that connection. The huge support that Vardar had on the west stand was brilliant to see but it just wasn’t enough.

Then I recalled an old conversation I had with one of my grandfathers. He once sat me down in the middle of Prilep’s bazaar and told me stories of this once big football club from my hometown that was then taken off the face of the earth after dubious events. It was a team that the entire town supported with a population of 45,000 filling up a stadium that could fit up to 15,000. It was revered across Macedonia and Yugoslavia for its exceptional home support and it even gave Prilep the moniker “the most footballing town in Macedonia”. That team was the original Pobeda, a club that dissolved in 2010 after UEFA and FIFA issued 10 year bans from continental and domestic competitions following a match fixing scandal.

Immediately after they were forced to close their doors, a phoenix club was formed called Viktorija, which then changed its name to Pobeda Junior and then back to Pobeda in 2015. They fought their way up the ranks and finally reached the 1.MFL in 2016 after winning the 2.MFL title. This would be the team I would eventually decide to support. Every time I visited Prilep to see my extended family I would make sure to at least stop by the stadium just to see if anything was happening. Whether it was the renovations funded by the UEFA HatTrick program, or if I’d ever spot any of the players doing any training from the famous staircase that led up to the city hospital.

So why are we here then? If this was any other story the club would stabilize and compete in the 1.MFL for the foreseeable future. Instead this historic club would announce that it would quit competing in 2.MFL on February 10th 2026. This followed an entire winter where the club made no announcements to start training or play any friendlies whilst their decision means the club will be immediately relegated to the lowest tier of competition, which for clubs in Prilep means the fifth tier of the Macedonian football pyramid.

“Let’s start by discussing the state of the club. In April 2025 there was a change in the majority shareholder of our club. The new shareholder had already stated that they do not intend to run the club which meant that the only legitimate meeting between shareholders never saw the appointment of a managing director…

At this moment, with the club’s bank accounts frozen and the continuing troubling financial situation, we inform the public that FK Pobeda’s senior team will not be able to continue competing in the 2. Macedonian Football League.” read part of Pobeda’s statement.

This entire ordeal is a disaster, not just for football in Prilep but Macedonian football as a whole. How such a fate can befall a club of Pobeda’s stature for a second time should raise serious questions about the long term sustainability of the sport and the way that many in the country fund and operate their clubs. And yet in all likely hood most will just dismiss this case as just another club that dared to dream of greater things and fell flat on its face due to incompetent leadership, poor and/or unsubstantiated spending, farcical signings and misplaced belief.

For the sake of this article, we will go through a couple of points that contributed to the eventual downfall of Pobeda:

• The endless stadium renovations that were several years overdue their deadline;

• The presidents and owners who did not help in building a good foundation;

• The 2022/23 season which saw Pobeda embarrassed on a national scale;

• The dreamers who quit on the club just months into their ownership and essentially killed the club.

The stadium (and its never ending renovations)

[For this section, many points will be sourced from Petar Jedikovski’s report for TV Sonce about the construction of the stadium. If you wish to learn more feel free to check out his report linked here.]

For many years one of Pobeda’s most defining features was its stadium and fans. Stadion Goce Delchev was a marvel within Yugoslavia and Macedonia, having a capacity of 15,000 seats and somehow managing to despite the town only having a population of 45,000. Prilep loved Pobeda and by extension loved football. However after the original club was dissolved following the match fixing scandal, the stadium found itself falling into disrepair. This isn’t even mentioning the decline in support that followed after the phoenix club had to start competing in the third tier.

The biggest hurdle for any renovations was the lack of money to make the necessary changes, so when UEFA came around and offered €1,000,000 to renovate the stadium under the HatTrick program, The FFM and the municipality of Prilep agreed to take on the project. The work was expected to start in 2016 with a deadline around 2019 for the 2019/20 season. Now this is the part where I remind everyone that this is Macedonia, and if there is a possibility to fuck up something spectacularly, people in positions of significance will take it without a care in the world.

The deal between FFM and the municipality was that the FFM would handle the pitch, the drainage and the new floodlights whilst the rest would be taken care of by the municipality. According to then mayor Ilija Jovanoski, they had reached out to two contractors who were supposed to complete work one after another. However he stated that the company that was responsible for the initial metalwork, Novogradba, only completed 7% of the work that they were meant to have done in 4 months.

Additionally there was big issues with the work the FFM had begun as they had agreed a deal with a Bulgarian contractor to install the floodlights and pitch. The problem then? They didn’t get the correct building permits, so the 4 gigantic floodlights that were already installed and towered over the entire town were officially classified as an illegal structure. As if that wasn’t enough the FFM’s then president Ilcho Gjorgjioski tried to give management of the floodlights over to the municipality, who unilaterally declined their offer.

With construction on the stadium being so chaotic and the FFM not contributing any more, all work would be postponed temporarily in 2018 whilst the municipality sought alternative solutions for its construction. Work would begin once more in 2019 as the municipality sought out new contractors that could complete the needed work. The drainage was finally installed, a roof would be installed only on the north stand, the pitch would be laid out and the stands themselves would get a new coat of paint. Delays due to COVID-19 would mean the project couldn’t finish in a single year however in 2021 the stadium was finally functional and ready for Pobeda to use.

Whilst everyone was celebrating that the stadium finally finished its renovations, there were still many problems that plagued the stadium. For one, no seats were installed on any of the stands, only around the VIP section. This meant that if you were ever in need of sitting down, you’d have to enjoy the feeling of cold concrete unless you remembered to bring that old copy of Zenit with you as “padding”.

The second was that with only the north stand getting a roof, that meant that should the weather get worse the south stand would not be protected from the elements. It became a recurring trend for people on the south stand to leave the stadium or hug the wall at the top if they didn’t bring an umbrella with them, leading to poorer support from that side of the stadium.

Additionally because the floodlights were still technically under the FFM’s management, it fell onto them to maintain their functionality. Unfortunately the floodlights would be damaged several times as cables would be cut frequently making their use and maintenance almost impossible.

The effect these continuously delayed renovations had on Pobeda were huge. For one Pobeda had to spend the last 5 years looking to rent stadiums whilst they competed in the 1.MFL from 2016 to 2019 and then the 2.MFL from 2019 onwards. This meant having to pay rent for each home game, get only a portion of match revenue which was already lower than what they would’ve been used to as the games would be played in cities like Bitola, Shtip or Kochani. On top of all that they would also not only have to transport their own players and staff but also ball boys, stewards etc. meaning that what would’ve been an activity that could be done in at most 4-5 hours meant people had to commit to working an entire day which increased the price paid for those expenses too. For all intensive purposes, Pobeda became a traveling circus for 5 years and that left a huge strain on the clubs financial capabilities.

The chaos caused by Pobeda’s many presidents and owners

When it was formed in 2010, Pobeda’s phoenix club sought support from local companies that would bring it back to the level it deserved to be at. Many of them would eventually invest directly into the club as they bought up shares within the venture and invested not just as sponsors but as pillars of the club’s continued survival. Among these companies were Prilepska pivarnica, Comfy Angel, Zhito Prilep and Kabelnet from whom several presidents would run the club periodically.

In late 2015, Goce Ingilizov would be appointed as the club’s president replacing the then departing Goran Hadji-Risteski. Ingilizov is a doctor by trade but his time at the club would be more well known for his ties to Macedonian political party VMRO-DPMNE, whom he is a member of and previously sat on its municipal council. This fact alone would cause huge strain for Pobeda in its later years as VMRO-DPMNE’s downfall and left wing SDSM’s rise and victory in the 2017 local elections saw his position as club president become a point of contention.

Immediately the municipality and SDSM began to accuse Ingilizov of embezzling funds for the stadium through his mother’s ties to Novogradba, one of the original contractors for the stadium. Additionally they claimed that he became a 20% shareholder at Pobeda with a non-monetary contribution of €5,000 thanks in part due to his close ties with then mayor Marjan Risteski. With pressure mounting and his position potentially leading to Pobeda receiving no support from the municipality, Ingilizov resigned with the local companies tasked to steady the ship.

Try as they might though, the club found itself in debt that they simply weren’t able to find a way to finance without breaking the bank and soon the club would be relegated to the 2.MFL where said problem would be exasperated. Seeing the writing on the wall the shareholders decided to hand their shares to the municipality following the club’s relegation. The municipality then voted in favor of taking the share and in April 2021, 80% of those shares were handed to three individuals who were already at the club, Blagoja Geshoski, Kiril Ovezoski and Zoran Mircheski.

Of the three Geshoski was the most note worthy. Having come up through the academy at Pobeda, he was one of the club’s most tenured players achieving 97 appearances and 54 goals from 1999 to 2008 and was key part of the 2006/07 title winning campaign. He left just before the original club dissolved but would return to play for Pobeda in 2013 where he stayed until his retirement at the end of the 2020/21 season. Whilst Geshoski was certainly someone with knowledge of Pobeda, the thing he certainly didn’t have was business acumen as the then 40 year old was surely not well off enough to maintain the club without financial backing or good hands on deck.

This is why one of the club’s first decisions was also to appoint Emil Janeski as president of the club whilst Geshoski was given the role of sporting director. This also came with the formation of a 9 person board that was meant to include the mayor, the shareholders and president, members of the FFM who represented Prilep and fans of Pobeda. Having just barely survived in the 2020/21 season, Pobeda entered the new season with genuine enthusiasm. With the stadium somewhat finished, the club was able to host their games back in Prilep without resorting to playing at a different pitch. On top of that you had a very strong core of players from the town alongside many faces from around the top end of the 2.MFL.

It was that good energy around the city as well as good management from both Darko Krstevski and Dimitar Kapinkovski which saw Pobeda achieve a top of the table finish in the 2021/22 season in the 2.MFL. New signing Bojan Spirkoski would finish the season with a whopping 20 goals which was not just the most in the eastern group but in the entire league. What’s more, Pobeda’s under-19s became champions of the Macedonian U19s Super League for the first time since 2004, giving them a spot to compete in the UEFA Youth League. Things couldn’t be going better for Pobeda.

The disastrous 2022/23 season

Whilst on the pitch the club was excelling, off the pitch there were some changes that impacted the club. For one, the local elections in 2021 meant that Prilep would return to VMRO-DPMNE after the many scandals that plagued SDSM. This would see Emil Janeski hand in his resignation due to said changes in local leadership with no new successor named afterwards. With his departure it seemed as if Geshoski took on the responsibilities as the main figurehead at Pobeda, but since no announcement or statement was ever made that much is left ambiguous. What was certain was that this season would be very difficult for Pobeda financially, as the club certainly did not possess the financial capabilities to compete properly in the 1.MFL.

Additionally, they would replace Dimitar Kapinkovski and put Boban Babunski in his place. Babunski is a Macedonian footballing legend having been one of a few Macedonians to ever receive call ups to the Yugoslav national team. That said his coaching career was lackluster to say the very least. He has only had 3 management roles at the time, one with Rabotnichki in the late 2000s then leading Macedonia’s under 21s before Blagoja Milevski came in and finally Vardar in 2018. With Babunski being out of coaching for almost 4 years, there were many questions if he was capable of taking on the task.

Regardless of all that the transfer window was about to kick off. With the club strapped for cash it felt like the logical step to focus on building a squad of players from Prilep and avoid going for international players. After all, the FFM to this day still has a rule in which clubs have to pay premiums up to thousands of euros per player. Instead however it seemed as if Pobeda was looking to do the exact opposite of that, with the club finding several foreign players to fill out their roster.

Whilst Amos Dadet and Ognen Djurkovic came from clubs in fellow ex-Yugoslav nations, two names stood out as questionable beyond all doubt. English forward Kal Malass and Ghanaian left back Eric Amo arrived to Prilep with little to no pedigree to back them. Amo came in from Ghanaian lower league side Feyenoord Youth (no relation to the Dutch club) and during his time with the club he only ever achieved 3 appearances with 105 minutes total. Malass meanwhile had a stint so disastrous which belongs as one of the worst transfers in the history of Macedonian football.

Despite the questionable arrivals, Pobeda was able to at least finish the first half season in 9th, just above then struggling Akademija Pandev and Skopje. New arrivals like Hamza Ramani and Igor Panoski along with players already at the club like Atdhe Mazari and Bojan Spirkoski and youth academy graduates Filip Todoroski and Andrej Arizankoski were doing just enough to push the club forward. However in the winter numerous financial issues would arise in Prilep. For starters many players went without salary, causing a mass exodus at the club during the winter break. Ramani went to Sileks, Mazari and Todoroski made their way to Rabotnichki, even Spirkoski and Mario Naumoski went south to Pelister. Even manager Boban Babunski departed for other opportunities.

A full rebuild would be required and yet the club had little to no money. With times being as desperate as they were, the club once again went to strange places for their recruitment. Many 2.MFL quality players would arrive to fill out the squad along with two young Serbian players who came in on loan. The most damning arrival of the whole winter and proof of the new board’s unpreparedness and unseriousness was Saleem Fawakhri. Fawakhri, then a 23 year old Israeli attacking midfielder, arrived from lower league side Maccabi Neve-Sha’anan who then played their football in the 4th tier of Israeli football. That’s right, Pobeda’s marque foreign arrival was an Israeli amateur player who’s biggest achievement is a combined 92 minutes across two games in the Israeli State Cup.

Following almost the entire team’s departure, a rebuild starring many what’s-their-faces of the Macedonian second tier and foreigners that had little to no capability at playing professional football, would you believe me if I told you that Pobeda went on to lose every single game of the second half-season? If you did, great, cause that’s exactly what happened. The 2022/23 season remains one of the worst seasons in 1.MFL history and were it not for Shkupi’s mockery of professional football this year, would see Pobeda’s 2022/23 rank as the worst 1.MFL campaign in recent history.

Steady decline and eventual nail in the coffin

Following the disaster of the 2022/23 season, Pobeda would spend its remaining years as a team battling for survival in the 2.MFL. With a budget smaller than Stuart Little’s living requirements and players who would cycle in and out quicker than Mark Cavendish at the Tour de France, there was little hope left that things would turn for the better for Pobeda. Its lowest ebb during this period was having to play for survival in the 2023/24 2.MFL relegation playoffs against 3.MFL North champions Kumanovo. Through a heroic effort from the Pobeda defense and goals from David Debreshlioski and Nikolche Sharkoski, they would survive the battle in Gjorche Petrov and live to fight another day.

The bad financial state didn’t just have an effect on the senior side, as soon the youth teams would be left dried out due to many prospects getting immediate promotions to the first team. Though that did lead to many good players being discovered like Leonid Kofilovski, Bojan Ivcheski and Davor Bogevski, many of them would quickly leave once more stable clubs came calling. It seemed like as the seasons ticked on the club’s relegation would become more certain due to the reoccurring phenomenon of Pobeda finding youth players that can keep it in the 2.MFL, only for said players to leave shortly after.

However a glimmer of hope finally befell Pobeda, as new owners were set to arrive in the spring of 2025. Headed by Macedonian-American businessman Aleksandar Mickovski along with his sister Jana Mickovska-Poposka and her husband and coach Sashko Poposki, the new ownership sought to bring Pobeda back to the top with promises of trophies ‘within 3 to 5 years’. All of it sounded perfect to many in Prilep, maybe even too good to be true. And unfortunately, it indeed turned out to be exactly that. Just as quickly as a new board of directors came in did the new ownership immediately declare they wanted to sell. This once again led to instability at the club, however this time the club’s very existence was in question rather than any position on the table.

Shortly after the announcement that the club would be left to its own devices by the new owners, the municipality of Prilep agreed to give the club a total of 1,000,000 denari in relief. Whilst the club was left without a captain, the club’s then secretary Filip Ilioski stood in as the club’s temporary managing director whilst a solution was being looked into. He alongside another board member Vladimir Mircheski stated in a press conference that the situation for Pobeda was so dire that if the money that the municipality promised did not arrive the club would simply have to quit the 2.MFL.

After competing in the first half of the season, Pobeda found itself in 12th after three wins, two draws and ten losses. It sat comfortably in the relegation zone with the 2.MFL set to shrink from 16 teams to 14 and a divine miracle would’ve been needed to get it out of the relegation fight. However as the days and weeks of the winter break passed, no news came of what Pobeda would do. No new signings, no mid season training and no friendlies either. Just silence on the part of the club. Fans would begin to gather in front of the city center and in front of the municipality, hoping that either they or someone else would save the club. Even then attendance was middling as many began to lose hope and eventually the worst was announced; Pobeda Prilep was quitting the 2.MFL.

The money the municipality promised several months ago before the local elections in 2025 never arrived, per Pobeda’s final statement. The municipality meanwhile released their own statement, claiming that Pobeda’s debts to UJP, Macedonia’s administration for public revenues were worth around 7,000,000 denari. They also accused the club’s owners of using Pobeda’s finances for the purposes of gambling and other fraudulent expenses. Even despite everything, there was still one final push for Pobeda to compete until the end of the 2.MFL season.

The club’s youth players were brought in to train with the hopes that they would be able to play out the rest of the season, as at the time the club did not officially send in a notice that it would quit the league. The club’s head of youth would’ve stepped in as the coach whilst any remaining players were welcomed to see the season through. Unfortunately even that attempt was unsuccessful per a statement from the Majmuni and thus finally ended any hope of Pobeda’s survival.

“Even after all our attempts for our icon not to fade, our efforts were unsuccessful… Even after we managed to build a team that could take us as far as the [relegation] playoffs, we were stopped by some ‘higher power.’” read part of the Majmuni’s statement.

“…There must be accountability! Publicly who, how and where they caused this damage!…”

Where do we go from here?

I’ll start this segment by simply talking about the feelings that I’m currently feeling. To be a football fan without the club you cherish most is a hollow experience. I’ve had friends joke about their clubs doing poorly (looking at you my good friend from Dalmatia), but this feeling of not having a club to even talk or complain about on the weekends takes a toll on the soul.

Sure, I can watch the Premier League or the Champions League or I can watch any other sports to get my fill of entertainment, but I’d always turn back to watch Pobeda because I deeply loved it so much. Yes, sometimes the results were so mind numbingly terrible that I felt like doing literally anything else but watching Pobeda, but I still came back week after week hoping that the next game would be the beginning of its comeback.

Now that’s gone. Not even just for a few months when someone will probably create another phoenix club, but for the foreseeable future. If a phoenix club were to be formed it would have to climb several tiers before it even got back to the level it once was at. Even then you don’t know if the same faults will befall this new club and all that hope of a new beginning gets replaced with the feeling that everything you just experience over the last 16 years will repeat again in a vicious cycle that torments us all.

At this point we’d turn to many of the culprits for this disaster, but there are so many to name you sometimes can’t even point to exactly who did the most damage. You had the last ownership who sank the club and left without as much as trying, along with the previous ownerships before that who either through political nonsense or complete incompetence led the club astray. Then there are the external causes like the FFM and their inept operating of the stadium reconstruction which cost Pobeda and Prilep a home for the city’s favorite sport. And let’s not forget the municipality who over several mayorships lied about where the club would play, lied about the money they promised they would give the club, and especially did little to nothing to save it at its most perilous. Their own attempts to blame bad actors in Pobeda should not be enough to cleanse them of their own guilt in what was their reckless abandon of a club the community held dear to their heart.

And now what? Pobeda is dead in the ground with the only teams it consist of now being their youth teams which will certainly fold either now or after the end of the season. In its heyday Pobeda was a certain constant for many in Prilep. You’d finish your workweek and then in the weekend you either sat down at home or you made the walk to the stadium and watched the city’s jewel play against some of the best in Macedonia. Even when those days were over, the club was still a bedrock of the town, though tainted by the mistakes of the past.

Despite the lies, the corruption and everything you can imagine that plagued this club until its last breath, for me and for many more out there, there is nobody like Pobeda Prilep.

The transfer saga between Rogers Mato, FK Vardar and Hearts is finally at an end. Hearts have secured the services of Mato on a loan deal from Vardar until the end of his contract at the Macedonian club. This follows after Vardar botched their handling of transfer negotiations, left the door open for a pre-contract to be signed which Hearts capitalized on. This was then followed by Vardar’s attempts to claim that they had sold Mato to Sporting Kansas City, only for SKC to come out with a statement saying that they tried but failed to get the Ugandan’s signature.

With Vardar basically in a position where all the could do is limit Mato’s minutes, Hearts decided to agree a deal with Vardar that would bring him to Edinburgh this January on a 6 month loan until eventually his contract expires in June. Though several sources argue about the exact value, the reported loan fee is expected to be around £300,000, which when exchanged into euros is basically the same offer that they made previously to Vardar. Seems like a good time to remind everyone that Vardar rejected that offer and then demanded €1,500,000 for Mato’s services which then triggered Hearts to attempt to sign him via a pre-contract.

If you ask Vardar how the feel about this deal, they’d tell you two things. One, they’re furious that Mato didn’t sign a new deal with the club. As we understood, Vardar had attempted to negotiate with Mato over the course of several months on a new deal, having also rejected offers of around €300,000 from Algerian side JS Kabylie. Both sides knew that eventually Mato would leave Skopje, but Vardar’s insistence on a contract was so that they could be sure that they made as much money as possible from him. After all, they have huge debts they still need to cleared and any money that they could get would help not just in replacing the Ugandan but in repaying all that debt. The problem is that Vardar were either so sure that Mato would sign the contract or that he wouldn’t leave the club on a free that they put out a €1,500,000 buyout clause, which as we’ve covered extensively, blew up in their face.

The second thing Vardar would say is that they are completely confused about his choice to go to Scotland. Vardar’s decision makers were seemingly stunned that the Ugandan opted to move to Tynecastle as opposed to some of the other options they had on the table like the bid from SKC which Vardar had publicly accepted. Their argument? Well in the US he’d get to play with some of football’s greatest stars and would also get handsomely paid. “Mato will get to play with Messi, Suarez, Giroud, Lloris, Busquets…” read part of Vardar’s statement when they announced they agreed to SKC’s terms.

If you want a rational footballing explanation, there is actually a very good reason to pick going to the SPFL over going to MLS; good players are easier to spot in Scotland. Even if Mato did fantastically in MLS, securing top spot in almost every statistic imaginable and being without a doubt the best player in the league, do you really think the media would say anything about that? No, they’d say things like “Messi can’t even be the top goal scorer of MLS” or talk about how the stars of yesteryear are bound to retire. Mato’s name would be a passing mention when you have the likes of Lionel Messi in the same league. If you support a smaller nation that beat a much bigger one in international qualifiers or whatnot, you absolutely know what that looks and feels like and that its a terrible feeling.

Conversely, look at the Scottish Premiership and try to point out a star there. Sure, all of them are good footballers, that’s not up for debate, but in no way will they overshadow you if you perform great. Furthermore the SPFL has a long list of names that have come through and have gone on to be household names. Think of Henrik Larsson, Virgil van Dijk, Andrew Robertson, Jeremie Frimpong, Kieran Tierney, Mikel Arteta and many more. If you are a young player who wants to further develop themselves, get their name out there and eventually move onto greener pastures, making a move to a club like Hearts is a great choice. That’s not to mention that with the way things are going as of the writing of this article, Hearts are set to play Champions League football next season.

Though this mess of a saga is finally over, fingers will continue to be pointed at either Vardar or Mato for the foreseeable future. Vardar will feel aggrieved that they couldn’t break the 1.MFL transfer record with Mato’s sale, that Mato never signed a new contract or that Mato chose to go on a pre-contract whilst they themselves never admit that their confidence or arrogance might have been misplaced. Either way two things are for certain, Hearts’ recruitment staff are enjoying pints at their local pub having found themselves in a situation where they couldn’t lose and that AP Brera, who had a 20% sell on clause on Mato, are absolutely pissed.

Note: Sporting Kansas City’s spokesperson have since come out with a statement over Rogers Mato. "Sporting Kansas City explored a transfer for Rogers Mato but he has elected to sign a pre-contract with Hearts and we wish him all the best in the future." This all but confirms that Mato is headed for Tynecastle in the summer.

Today Vardar have come out with an announcement that they have accepted a “million dollar bid” from MLS side Sporting Kansas City for their Ugandan star Rogers Mato. This comes after yesterday’s news that Scottish side Hearts, who currently lead the Scottish Premiership, agreed a pre-contract with Mato which is set to see him head north to Edinburgh in the summer. This is all, to put it lightly, an absolutely bizarre set of circumstances that raise more questions about the management at Vardar than it answers.

We’ve already covered the rumors about a supposed new contract that didn’t happen in our previous article. This meant that Mato’s contract, which would expire in 6 months, left Vardar in a situation where a club like Hearts could take him away for absolutely nothing despite their demands of €1,500,000.

Despite this, Vardar are trying to save face and look for ways to offload Mato now rather than to see him stay another 6 months and eventually join the Scottish side. This is where the offer from Sporting Kansas City comes in with their offer to get him. The problem here is the logistics of the deal that the clubs will have to agree upon. With Mato already having a pre-contract with Hearts, any deal that would see him go elsewhere between now and then would also require Hearts’ involvement, whether to allow him to stay in the US for 6 months until their pre-contract becomes official or if Mato and Hearts decide to terminate their pre-contract with certain compensation being paid out. Alternatively, Hearts and Mato can reject any deal from Kansas and the pre-contract would stay in force.

The only winning move for Vardar is if they are able to convince Mato to cancel his pre-contract with Hearts and to go to the US. This is why they made it a key point in their announcement to include the mention of a potential salary for Mato and a mention of the kinds of players he would get to play against. Furthermore, with a move to Sporting Kansas, they would get 10% of any transfer fee that he generates from a move away.

Should the exact opposite happen and Mato keeps to his word with Hearts, then Vardar will once again look like fools and SKC would be made to look like even greater ones for bidding on a player they would only be able to keep for a maximum of 6 months with absolutely no return. A reminder that the MLS season in 2026 will still run under a spring to autumn format, with the transition from summer to spring coming into affect from 2027 onwards. This would once again make the move for Mato nearly pointless for SKC as he would not be able to compete in any of their later matches or even the post-season should they reach the playoffs.

The tale between Vardar, Hearts and Mato will continue for the next coming weeks, but there is no telling how much more ridiculous things will become with how Vardar’s management is scrambling for options.

Vardar’s Rogers Mato is set to leave the Macedonian giants after he and Hearts agreed on a deal that would see him join the Scottish side after the 25/26 season when his contract ends. This comes as a shock move after Vardar had initially declined two offers of €350,000 and €500,000 from Hearts and then publicly stated that they would only let the Ugandan star leave for a whopping €1,500,000 buyout clause. Should this price have been reached, Mato would have smashed the 1.MFL transfer record currently held by David Toshevski’s move to Rostov back in the summer of 2020. As it stands however, Vardar will receive nothing from the transfer they had hoped would aid them in their financial recovery as the club aims to stabilize from its massive debt.

Whatever Vardar had been planning for after Mato’s departure is now no longer going to happen and major questions need to be raised about how such a prolific player has been let go in such a way. Though most people will point the finger to Mato for ‘betraying Vardar’ and that he should be immediately sent to the reserves to rot for daring to undermine the club, there should be just as many heads turned towards the Vardar board for even allowing this to happen.

Vardar have for the longest time hailed themselves as Macedonia’s greatest team due to their long and successful history. Though it cannot be denied that their legacy in Macedonian football is unrivaled, their status as a top team in recent years has been shaky at best following several debt ridden years, poorly handled ownerships and even political meddling according to Vardar’s ultras group Komiti. The newest board is unfortunately no different and they would too preach about Vardar’s greatness above any other club in the country.

Vardar’s 2025/26 has been a success with the club is still undefeated in the 1.MFL and have a two point gap over their closes rivals Struga. This was enough for with the clubs managing director Milenko Nedelkovski to used his social media to share how great Vardar have been since he took over the role, with even Vardar’s own web site proudly displaying a table of before and after the new ownership arrived. The arrogance within the club is at such a height that on Vardar’s 78th birthday, the then sporting director of the club went onto say that ‘Vardar was saving Macedonia’s UEFA Ranking’. It should be noted that after this statement, Vardar suffered their only blemish of the season. A 6-2 loss on aggregate against Lausanne-Sport in which they lost 5-0 in the away leg, whilst their domestic rivals Shkendija have since gone onto compete in the Conference League group phase and soon will be the first Macedonian team to appear in the European knockout phases.

This should set the stage that lead up to the current situation with Rogers Mato. Mato arrived in January 2025 from fellow 1.MFL side AP Brera where he enjoyed a great year with the ‘nero-verdi’. Though he would start from the bench in his first half season with the club, Mato would immediately establish himself as an excellent player and a one to watch in the coming season. Those hopes would be realised as the Ugandan has been astonishing in all competitions for Vardar. 12 goals in 13 games in the 1.MFL along with 3 more goals in Conference League qualifying. His blistering pace and great technique have made him a hot commodity, especially following his performances with Uganda at the African Cup of Nations.

These performances were enough to start speculation that Vardar had handed a new contract to Mato. Among the reported details of the contract, Mato was expected to make €100,000 annually which would be around €2,000 per week whilst also allegedly agreeing to increase is release clause to €800,000. These rumors however would be denied the following day by Nedelkovski himself who stated that in a press conference that the reports “simply aren’t true”.

So, according to Nedelkovski, Vardar’s own sporting director, no new contract had been given to Mato by December 17th. This is where the fun begins as the winter transfer window approached and clubs began to offer deals for Vardar’s Ugandan superstar. In came bids from many clubs, with Hearts’ offer being the one publicly rejected. After another alleged bid from the Scottish side, Vardar finally imposed a ‘buyout clause’ for Mato of €1,500,000. Should any team offer that much, Mato would be free to negotiate with them. Of course it wasn’t anything in his contract but it was the minimum that Vardar were willing to accept.

However in all of this there was a slight problem. You see, Mato’s current contract was still going and was set to expire in the summer of 2026. We aren’t aware if Mato was offered a new deal but we are certain the previously reported one was false. That meant that Mato’s contract would still expire in six months time, and once Hearts realized this, they skipped the needless negotiations they were having with Vardar and spoke with the Ugandan directly. Eventually the two parties agreed on a deal, which will see Mato leave Vardar in the summer, not for the record breaking sum the wanted, but for absolutely nothing. You can imagine the cheers in Edinburgh in honor of a certain Jean-Marc Bosman as Hearts’ management were getting their deserved drinks for the night.

This is a comical blunder that could only be achieved by a club like Vardar. The fact that such a detail slipped past every single individual at the club should be seriously concerning as Vardar was already set to lose their manager Goce Sedloski at the end of the season after he was hired as the new Macedonian national team manager. Though Mato will stay with Vardar until the end of the season, there are doubts about how the news of his deal with Hearts will be received internally, with a likely outcome being that he will be ostracized from the club as a ‘traitor’. Still that won’t change the fact that the people that allowed this to happen will still be at the club, wondering how they’ll find an adequate replacement with barely enough money to do so.

Rogers Mato’s case should serve as a cautionary tale that, whoever you are, whatever history your club has, you cannot let arrogance blind you from making terrible mistakes that could possibly have ramifications down the line. Players like Mato should be let go for big sums when the time is right and not let go for free because of a management failure. Many in the Macedonian media are scrambling for possible ways that Vardar can still make their money from Mato, but realistically Vardar are more likely to stop being incredibly pretentious than to get such a resolution.

Macedonian giants FK Pelister are set to get a new owner should negotiations between the Municipality of Bitola, who currently own the club and prospective buyers Nanook Sports Capital bear fruit. This comes as the municipality announced that it would hold a meeting on December 29th with one of the points on the agenda being to agree on a “strategic/investment partnership for FK Pelister” along with many other topics.

Details within the preliminary agreement between the municipality, the club and NSC were then released by the Pelister fan page “И моето дете ќе навива за Пелистер”. In it NSC is described as a consultancy firm who assist and invest in many professional and semi-professional clubs, academies and sports infrastructure, with a focus on “restructuring the corporate structure of clubs, financial stabilization, growing brands, growth in commercial revenue and creating an international network of academies for talent growth”.

The agreement itself outlines that NSC would take over 75% of the shares of FK Pelister with the municipality holding onto the remaining 25%, NSC’s commitment to increase the club’s budget to €2,000,000 by 2029 alongside promising that the club would receive profits above €200,000 per year. These finances would be achieved through a sponsorship agreement that NSC would achieve with an unnamed Turkish bank with whom they already have an preliminary agreement as well. Meanwhile the municipality agrees to invest in between €200,000 and €400,000 per year from its budget whilst having the ability to control certain aspects of the club’s board and youth academy staff.

The biggest talking points are the changes that would happen to the club’s branding, with the agreement stating that the club’s name would officially change from FK Pelister to FC Pelister Nanook. Alongside that there would be plans to form a women’s team that will compete in Macedonia’s women’s football pyramid under the same name and a brief mention that any jerseys the club would wear in the future would “bear the signature of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk”, per the previously mentioned Turkish bank’s request.

With regards to the rebrand to include Nanook as a part of the clubs branding, it is not too rare in Macedonia for such cases to happen. For instance in the 2000s, Rabotnichki rebranded to Rabotnichki Kometal after the company owned by Trifun Kostovski invested heavily into the club during that period. Among more modern examples include former 1.MFL sides Renova and Euromilk alongside recent champions Struga Trim-Lum. Though this might be the case, there is still a resistance to such a rebrand within Pelister fan circles to include a name they are not at all familiar with. Additionally the requirement to include Atatürk’s signature on jerseys, regardless of his ties to the city where he studied in military school, has raised many eyebrows in Bitola.

Another point of contention is NSC’s ties to Turkish investment, which has in the past not gone over well in Macedonian football. Many clubs in the past have been taken over by Turkish businessmen however many of those said ownerships have ended in disaster, most notably KF Gostivari who would cease to exist after the club and its then president Enes Usta would receive lengthy bans from Macedonian football.

Additionally other stories exist as well, such as the case of Voska Sport’s short lived Turkish ownership which crumbled after just a month and Tikvesh’s new Turkish owner who left just shortly after he had acquired the club after he failed to meet most of the financial demands set by the Municipality of Kavadarci.

Finally there are many details within the agreement that leave much to be desired by fans of Pelister. The agreement itself does not include investment guarantees from NSC itself, doesn’t include any details pertaining to veto power for the municipality, does not include right of first refusal and much more. Additionally questions are being raised about NSC’s partners who supposedly include clubs like Beşiktaş, Guadalajara, Empoli and more. Much remains to be seen as to how negotiations between the two parties will unfold, whether the meeting on Monday will see an agreement signed, if additional changes will come or the deal will be rejected. Should the agreement be signed, the municipality would have until March 15th to hand over the club and resolve any outstanding debts.

On December 1st, the Football Federation of Macedonia announced that it will not extend the contract of national team manager Blagoja Milevski. Milevski’s time with the national team has had a mixed reception. His four and a half years with the national team began with him taking over Igor Angelovski’s role after Macedonia participated in EURO 2020, which still remains the only major international competition they have ever qualified for. Although Macedonia was able to solidify themselves as a team that many big European nations struggled to break down on our best days, there were also too many poor results stacking up that saw any progress diminished just as quickly.

We all remember the 1-0 win over Italy in the World Cup playoffs - how could we not, but we also remember the sheer disappointment that followed when we finished in a dismal third in our 2022-23 Nations League C group which contained an up and coming Georgia, minnows Gibraltar and a Bulgarian side that still continues to fall so far from any glory it once held on the international stage. This is not to even mention the loss at home to Bulgaria when tensions between the two countries were at their worst.

Any good results we picked up against England or Italy at home in our EURO 2024 qualifiers were for nothing when you recall the embarrassment that was the 7-0 loss in Manchester that convinced then captain Stefan Ristovski to exile himself from the national team following disagreements with Milevski. And finally our great campaign that saw us just miss out on top spot in our 2026 World Cup qualifying group ended with a catastrophic 7-1 loss to Wales which saw our national team capitulate second place in the group and an easier draw in the upcoming playoffs.

I am not shy to say that even I have at times called Milevski’s reign as the national team manager as an utter failure, but there has to be a time where we acknowledge what good he brought to us. Under his reign we were still very competitive, capable of the unthinkable and looked, at very specific times, on the right track. His time as U21s national team manager where he got Macedonia to U21s EURO in 2017 still remains among the greatest achievements our country has ever seen and since his departure from the role neither of the two manager that followed have even come close to his success. He will and should be dearly missed in the FFM and his time will hopefully be looked more fondly in later years.

That being said, there is now a seat to fill in the Macedonian national team that will need to be sorted before the important World Cup playoff match against Denmark in March, and many candidates have sprung up as options. From domestically successful managers to internationally recognized names, this article will sift through the names being mentioned as most likely to take over the role in the effort to find if any of them should be the next manager of the national team.

Goce Sedloski, the league leader who struggles to find success in Europe

The first name to mention is the current manager of 1.MFL leaders Vardar. Goce Sedloski is a well known name across the region with his 100 caps for the Macedonian national team and the many years spent playing with both Hajduk and Dinamo in Croatia during his playing days. Once he hung up his boots he has distinguished himself as one of the better performing managers domestically, having successful stints at Vardar, Shkupi and Bosnian side Široki Brijeg. His successes include three 1.MFL league titles, two with Vardar in 2016 and 2017 and another with Shkupi in 2022, alongside a cup title with Vardar in 2025.

With the resume that Sedloski commands it might seem that he is a perfect candidate to take over the national team, but digging deeper into his results shows that he has a hard time travelling across the continent for games against other European sides. According to transfermarkt’s data, Sedloski has managed a total of 28 matches in European competitions (one with Dinamo’s U19s in the UEFA Youth League) of which he has only won in seven, amassing a goal difference of -16 from all games.

What’s more, among the results are many games where his teams entered with an advantage from their home leg, only to capitulate badly in the away leg. Think of the 4-1 loss to FC Kobenhavn after they beat them 1-0 at home in the 2017-18 Champions League qualifiers, which saw his first stint with Vardar prematurely end. Better yet, this season in Europe he entered the second leg against Lausanne-Sport with a 2-1 lead, only to lose the second leg with a score of 5-0.

These results should raise eyebrows about Sedloski’s ability to translate his good form with Vardar along to the national team, as his abilities will be tested in one of the most important jobs in Macedonian football. Though having a bad record in Europe isn’t the end all be all metric that will define how his time as manager of the national team would go should he be appointed, but it can point to his inability to adapt his style of play, tactical structure or the mental preparedness of his players for games away from home.

Slaven Bilic, the experienced coach who might feel too out of place

There aren’t many managers from the Balkans who are as well known and respected as Slaven Bilic. Although his management career hasn’t brought him as much success as his playing days, the Croatian manager is best known for his stint as Croatia manager where he led the “Vatreni” to qualification to EURO 2008 and EURO 2012, along with his time at West Ham from 2015 to 2017 in which he guided them to the Europa League qualifiers.

Though on paper he would be the best person to bring in, having managed at some of the highest levels of the game, there are still many issues that come with bringing in the Croat. The first one is that Bilic has not publicly come out and said he is interested in the role. Most of the speculation linking him to the job has come from Macedonian sources and they are well known to be “very sensationalist” at the best of times.

The second comes from Bilic’s own lack of knowledge of Macedonian football, the players the national team could rely on and what players can be looked into for a call up. This can be considered a huge dealbreaker considering that any manager not familiar with the current state of the national team would have three months at most to figure out almost everything required for the role like coaching staff, scouting, player shortlists and more as Macedonia fast approaches their important game against Denmark.

Another issue on the list is Bilic’s inability to stay in one place for too long. His stint with West Ham which ended almost a decade ago now is the last time he spent at least two years in one job, having been sacked or resigned from every job after a year or more since. If the FFM was looking for a short term solution that wouldn’t be much of an issue but considering the last few managers of the national team have had longer tenures this might not be something they’re interested.

Finally there is the Macedonian populous’ lack of an appetite for a foreign manager. Many would prefer a Macedonian coach to be hired since the national team has had a bad track record of foreign managers. The most notorious case being that of John Toshack, the Welsh manager who previously coached sides like Real Madrid, Real Sociedad and Deportivo La Coruña and took over the role as national team manager in 2011. In spite of his experience and success in the past, Toshack would only ever go on to win one of his eight games with the national team, only to have his contract terminated after he refused a request from the FFM to move to the country.

Igor Angelovski, the man who brought success and has fallen since

For the entirety of Milevski’s reign, one man’s shadow loomed over the Macedonian national team due to sheer significance of his achievement; Igor Angelovski. He was the man who brought Macedonia to EURO 2020, he was the man who bested Germany in Duisburg thanks to goals from Pandev and Elmas and he was the one who brought Macedonian football into the global spotlight. Without him and the work he put in from 2015 to 2021, the future of Macedonian football would most likely of continued to be bleak.

After rumors circulated about the FFM’s unwillingness to extend his contract after EURO 2020 came up and his exit was confirmed in his final press conference, the Macedonian public had always felt he had unfinished business with the national team and that the logical next step would be to see them taken to the World Cup by the same man who took them to the Euros. However since the days when he managed the national team, Angelovski has looked like a shell of his former self.

In the preceding years, Angelovski has managed in multiple clubs to little to no success. With Gorica in Croatia he notoriously failed to win a single league game and only scored two points in ten games in the HNL. His time with Kaspiy in Kazakhstan didn’t fair any better as he was sacked after suffering defeat in 4 successive league games. Now with Ethnikos in Cyprus he has managed to only win two of his eight league games so far this season with it becoming apparent that he’ll have to deal with a relegation battle.

Though the nostalgic factor of his time with the national team plays a huge roll in the favor he courts with Macedonian football fans, the reality is he is no longer the coach that received the call to be the manager in 2015. Back then he led Rabotnichki to a league and cup double in 2014, lifted the cup again in 2015 and almost reached the Europa League group stages only just missing out after a 2-1 loss on aggregate to Rubin Kazan. He was undeniably one of the best Macedonian coaches at the time and deserved a shot with the national team. Today that Angelovski no longer exists, or has simply been lost to time.

The other candidates

Other than the three mentioned before, there aren’t too many good candidates to take on the job of Macedonia’s national team manager. This is mostly down to there being a weaker pool of managers to choose from than in previous years or certain managers who would’ve previously been considered haven’t done as well as they have in the past. Gorazd Mihajlov previously was able to establish Sileks as a top half team in the 1MFL after their comeback to the top flight, whilst also doing good work with Borec and Teteks in the past. However after successive stints at Vardar, Brera and Besa Dobri Dol which all ended under differing circumstances, he is not likely anywhere near the list of options that the FFM is considering.

The same could be said for Gjorgji Mojsov. The journeyman who was once famously given a VIVAX television upon his retirement had his tenure at Tikvesh come to an end after results got too bad for the club to justify keeping him as manager. Mojsov previously led the “Lozari” to their first ever major title by winning the cup in 2024, however since then Tikvesh have been falling in the standings of the 1MFL and although the board showed patience last season, another patchy bit of form was the final nail in the coffin.

If the FFM wish to play it safe they could pick Goran Stanikj. Stanikj was previously a coach for the Macedonian youth ranks as well as one of Angelovski’s assistants. After a successful stint at Rabotnichki which saw them return to European football, he was given the role of U21s manager to see how he’ll fare in the country’s second most important job. Results have not been great. A single win and three draws in 10 games has left much to be desired, however the memory of his time at Rabotnichki aren’t that hazy and there is still time for him to prove himself.

Of the other coaches with a chance, the only realistic option that I could see is Aleksandar Vasoski who is the current manager of Sileks. Vasoski, much like Sedloski, is a well known face within the region having been a mainstay of the Macedonian national team from 2000 to 2008. As a manager he is very solid having done good jobs at Vardar, Akademija Pandev and has now built Sileks into a genuine title contender, just missing out last season and falling a bit behind this time around. His main downside is that he has little to no pedigree in European competitions, which has meant that he hasn’t really been able to test himself as a manager against opposition outside of the domestic leagues.

Are any of these options the correct answer for the national team?

In an ideal world, the person that gets picked to replace Milevski should be a mixture of traits that all options have. A manager with pedigree within and out of Macedonian football who knows the football landscape well and is capable of adapting his style of play to both fit the players available to him and to counter his opponent. Although that description sounds simple enough, there just isn’t really a coach like that available to us.

With every option we have now, we risk losing out on one single element which is just as crucial as all the others. Do you take Sedloski and risk him potentially not being capable enough for the job or being tactically exposed? Do you take Bilic and risk him leaving after only a short term stint or not getting the best out of the players? Do you take Angelovski in an attempt to catch lightning in a bottle once again and potentially risk damaging his legacy whilst getting nothing from it? Or do you go with a left field option with nothing to lose and hope it all works out?

Macedonia’s current crop of talent is nearing the day when they decide to retire from the national team. Many of our key players are in their early 30s and soon some might decide to retire early to focus on whatever club careers they have. Others might stay on but for how much longer they can continue to be dependable pieces of the national team remains to be seen. A new generation of players will need to be ushered in soon. Who will do that is just as important as who will see the old guard out into the sunset.

Personally, I believe that due to the many decisions that have been made by the FFM with regards to coaching and the form that many of Macedonia’s leagues and clubs have taken up over the last decade or so has caused a systematic failure to occur within Macedonian football where we don’t have at least one clear as daylight candidate that could take the mantle. The many years we spent struggling within the late 2000s and early 2010s should have been a wake up call to bring in new ideas and better educate coaches into the sport. Instead we mostly wait for UEFA or FIFA to congratulate us on running a successful module rather than to adapt and bring something new to the table. Thank god that Angelovski and Milevski were as good as they were for us for the last decade or so, otherwise the FFM’s decades worth of incompetence would be on full display.

There is no such thing as a Macedonian style of play because no one has ever dared to try and develop one. There should be less emphasis on catching up to Spain or Germany or England with regards to miniscule details that realistically mean nothing with regards to a better footballing system and instead more of an effort to look at some of our neighbors or up and coming nations like Japan or Faroe Islands and see their small successes, whether in youth football or their senior leagues, and to try and replicate it in our own way. If the FFM wants to get a manager that will take Macedonia to the World Cup, it along with almost all the clubs in Macedonia should make some changes of their own first.

Over the course of the history of football all around the world we can find various transfers that have failed to reach the expectations that the player or the price they came for or many other factors had set for them. You need only look at sites like X/Twitter or Facebook to see people sharing their grievances over certain players not fulfilling the sometimes unrealistic expectations that fans of super clubs like Manchester United or Barcelona put on their new shiny signings.

Transfers that eventually fail are a fact of life in football. According to Dr Ian Graham who works as the Director of Research at Liverpool FC, just more than 50% of all transfers fail to reach expectations for a variety of factors such as fitness, personal issues, being played out of position and more. Every time a club makes a transfer, it risks falling foul of one of these pitfalls. But when a player’s circumstances are just right, they can truly blossom and prove to be an inspired piece of business.

Meanwhile in Macedonian football, it feels as if the previously mentioned 50% is as fantastical as the story of Pinocchio. The unfortunate reality is that many clubs in Macedonian football do their recruitment with barely any tools that help them get better insight into their own recruitment. Most clubs often do their business by contacting agencies, seeing what players they can get and striking a deal like so. I dare suggest you could quite literally pick out 11 free agents out of Football Manager, stick them into a 1.MFL team and you’d get better results than some clubs have managed in previous seasons.

This isn’t to suggest that Macedonian football doesn’t have success stories. Vardar’s run to the Europa League was aided with the phenomenal signings of Tigran Barseghyan, Juan Felipe, Filip Gacevski, Boban Nikolov and more. Shkendija’s most successful period from 2017-2019 was helped by signings like Visar Musliu, Besart Ibraimi and Fehran Hasani. Going even further back you have the arrivals of many Brazilians to several Macedonian clubs like Wandeir or the late Rogério Oliveira. And lets not forget the period from 2020-2023 when Shkupi were able to find gem after gem like Dembo Darboe, Sunday Adetunji, Freddy Alvarez, Renaldo Cephas, Lamine Diack and Faustin Senghor.

However in spite of all the good signings, many bad ones stand out for a variety of reasons. Whether if its the expectations they arrived in, the circumstances around their arrival or in what shape they left their clubs, this article will look into some of the most infamous signings in Macedonian football history.

Crashing down from the bright lights

Much to the dismay of a certain Milenko Nedelkovski, the 1.MFL does actually have a history of players who have played in the top 5 leagues coming down after their careers have begun to wind down. Some like Goran Popov who played two seasons with West Brom in the Premier League played a small role in Vardar’s resurgence, whilst the formerly mentioned Besart Ibraimi and Fehran Hasani both had their short and fairly unsuccessful stints in the Bundesliga.

However one of the biggest names to arrive to Macedonian football has to be former Cameroonian international Mohamadou Idrissou. Mo Idrissou had a long history of playing in the Bundesliga with the likes of Hannover, Duisburg, Freiburg and Borussia Mönchengladbach, scoring a total of 27 goals across 139 appearances in the German top flight. This isn’t including his 68 goals that he would also score whilst being a prolific striker in the German 2. Bundesliga for several more German sides.

When the news came that this same goalscoring threat was joining Shkendija as the biggest signing for the club since Lazim Dastani’s Ecolog bought the club in 2013, there was huge excitement within Tetovo. Around that excitement however, several questions were being raised by keen eyed observers asked a pretty simple question; Why would a player like Mo Idrissou join Shkendija? In an attempt to address those questions, football site Macedonian Football reached out to a couple of Israeli journalists only to learn that his stint at Israeli side Maccabi Haifa ended because of he was disaster on and off the pitch.

Needless to say, whilst some hoped he would be able to turn it around with Shkendija, he had little to no impact whilst he was a part of the “Kuq e Zi”. Five appearances in the 1.MFL with no goals, being dropped for other options who performed better and even having visa issues in the middle of the season would eventually see both parties cut their deal short.

Mohamadou Idrissou is the perfect example that having all the experience in the world can’t paper over faults in someone’s behavior. Sure he was 34 years old when he signed and already declining, but that is no excuse for the way he behaved himself in Macedonia which saw him completely underperform in a league he should’ve been able to find his stride again and be a bigger piece in what would eventually become a title winning team in later years.

Walking in like the Wolf of Wall Street

As I mentioned before, a lot of transfers within Macedonian football use their contacts with agencies to find players that they can scoop up with no additional cost other than wages and any bonuses. This leaves clubs, especially those who just got promoted from the 2.MFL to the 1.MFL and who would now be looking to sign foreign players exposed to some not so inspiring signings.

Though I can list a few names here, the best course of action is to just point to the majority of Pobeda’s list of transfers for the 2022/23 season. From an Ghanaian full back who overstayed his welcome to an Israeli midfielder who had only played in the Israeli lower leagues his entire career, Pobeda’s 22/23 season deserves to be documented for how awful it was in a separate article or video. The worst deal of them all however was the signing of Englishman Kal Malass.

Malass arrived at the club as a free agent after a short stint with Serbian side Timok Zajecar where he made a grand total of zero appearances. Besides that obvious red flag, he had apparently also previously played for Morecambe’s under 23s and a variety of clubs across Europe alongside appearing to have a Nike sponsorship. Taking all of this into account and looking a bit deeper into the details, Malass’ signing wasn’t just a red flag, it might has well been a red banner flown by a plane above the stadium.

For starters, the clubs that Malass had previously played for were so low down their respective football league pyramids that the level the clubs were competing could only be considered amateur. Secondly, Malass was never under contract with the “Shrimps” at any point. Having reached out to a colleague of mine at the time who worked on Football Manager and specifically Morecambe FC, we were not able to confirm if he had even been on trial at the club as he wasn’t being followed on any social by players or staff at the club from that period. Finally, Malass was never even registered with Pobeda. Having reached out to the club at the time on multiple occasions at the time, I was informed that Kal Malass had not been registered by the club whatsoever despite already being promoted by several news sites and having a photo taken of him with the kit as a Pobeda player.

Overall, Kal Malass’ story proves that anyone with a good enough pitch can find themselves in Macedonian football if they talk to the right people. This story also somewhat mirrors the one of Louis Mickaël Sylla who had joined Makedonija Gjorche Petrov this summer and as of the writing of this article not appeared on any squad list for the “Lavovi”.

How can one transfer doom a football club?

Most transfers that do not work out do not have disastrous consequences for the club that signed them. At most, there can be a setback for the club with regards to its own expectations as it failed to achieve its goals with the players it has. But what happens when a signing has such a drastic affect on a club that their signing can be tied to the ensuing misfortunes of the team that signed them?

There are only a few cases in football like that, with the story of Benito Carbone’s transfer to Bradford City being a well known tale. An overall good player for the “Bantams” whose move was far too expensive and saw Carbone and Bradford terminate his deal with the Italian give up £3,200,000 in order to not be responsible for the club going into administration. The Macedonian equivalent of this story is the signing of Russian striker Maksim Maksimov by Vardar.

Picture the scene; You’re Sergey Samsonenko. Russian owner of FK Vardar since 2014 and owner of the most successful sports-betting company in Russia whilst having alleged ties to the Kremlin. You’re entering the 2017-18 season as champions and you want to add more firepower to your team and so to stick in line with signing players from Eastern Europe you find Maksimov from Lithuanian side Trakai.

Signing for almost €200,000, huge expectations are placed on the then 21 year old to help the club that would eventually also reach the UEFA Europa League group stage to another 1.MFL title. However, Maksimov isn’t able to deliver on the numbers he had with Trakai and over the next two seasons he only plays 29 games and scores 8 goals in the league. That in itself is not ideal but it wouldn’t be the first time a move had gone bust for Vardar.

There was however a slightly bigger problem with the signing of Maksimov; the deal was not completed within the international transfer deadlines. This lead to Trakai immediately launching an appeal to the Lithuanian Football Federation. After an investigation that spanned almost two years, Vardar was handed a year long transfer ban and a fine. Alongside that, Maksimov was also banned for 4 months for unproper termination of his contract. Maksimov was then shortly released by Vardar after he was banned.

Vardar’s transfer ban came at the worst possible time. Vardar’s bank accounts had been frozen by Macedonia’s public revenue office which made it impossible for Samsonenko to invest money into the club. As a result, Samsonenko pulled all funding from Vardar, leaving the club sponsorless and having to scrape by in what were very difficult circumstances. In a miracle in itself, Vardar would end up winning the 2019/20 1.MFL title however that was aided by the COVID-19 pandemic cancelling the rest of the games that season. With the club not being able to comply with UEFA’s FFP regulations, Vardar were barred from competing in UEFA competitions which would’ve given them a short financial windfall. Eventually Vardar would see themselves get relegated to the 2.MFL, where they would spend two seasons before finally coming back to the 1.MFL.

What is there to learn from these transfers?

Macedonian football has seen various ups and downs in its time and a constant of all that has and always will be the bad transfers. Whether they are down to unfulfilled expectations like Mo Idrissou, poor scouting like with Kal Malass or even just not following the rules like with Maksim Maksimov, some transfers will always find a way to fail. The best thing most clubs can do is learn from the past mistakes from others and make sure that they avoid doing the same, or else they risk making a fool of themselves or even worse setting themselves up for failure in the long run. With how quickly football is modernizing, the excuses for not adapting with the times are growing fewer and fewer.

Yesterday saw the draw for the 1.MFL, 2.MFL and Macedonian Cup take place as the 2025/26 season was set to begin. This marks what will be Masar Omeragikj’s first full season as the new FFM president alongside the likes of Goran Pandev, Agim Ibraimi, Ilija Najdoski and more coming into the FFM board of directors. It also marks the final season under the current format, as the 1.MFL and 2.MFL are set to shrink from 12 and 16 clubs to 10 and 14 clubs respectively. Additionally next season will also bring a new 6th group in the 3.MFL, however nothing has been said about which region will be added.

The draw itself was overshadowed slightly by Besa’s intention to withdraw the day before, leaving the 2.MFL with just 15 teams. This isn’t the first time that Besa had said they’d be withdrawing, as after their loss against Bashkimi the club announced through its social media that it won’t compete in next seasons 2.MFL. The same statement would then be denied by a spokesperson at the club, clarifying that the club’s sponsors had left but that the club was still going to compete.

This caused issues with the 3.MFL teams who had played a playoff game to decide who was going to go up and who had to hope that a draw held at the FFM headquarters would go in their favor. In the end of the three losing teams, Golemo Konjari and Osogovo were given the chance to compete in the 2.MFL whilst Prespa would have to go back into their 3.MFL Southwest group. Had Besa withdrawn before said draw had been done, Prespa would’ve competed in the 2.MFL.

Now that Besa’s withdrawal had officially been confirmed and communicated to the FFM, questions were being raised in the media if Prespa would get their spot. The club from Resen had not begun their preseason preparations as the 3.MFL season was set to begin in September. On top of that there would’ve been many financial doubts as the club would have to significantly raise its budget to compete in the 2.MFL. In the end when the next day came, their name was not on the list of competing teams.

The draw itself was a spectacle in a few interesting ways. First it saw Masar Omeragikj, Goran Pandev and Agim Ibraimi attend the event usually only being participated by representatives from clubs, certain media and commissioner for competitions at the FFM. The host and venue was also changed as FFM spokesperson Zlatko Andonovski was the main host of the draw, whilst the draw itself took place at the Hilton Hotel in Aerodrom, Skopje rather than the FFM’s headquarters.

To say the organization for the draw as shoddy is putting it mildly. On multiple occasions Andonovski had lost himself whilst the draw was taking place, having to be corrected by another member of the FFM when a certain criteria had been reached (two teams playing in the same venue having to be on opposing sides of the draw). This was especially evident when the draw for the cup arrived. The FFM should be thankful in a way that the cup draw was done live as if it weren’t for the livestream it would’ve almost been impossible for any attending journalist or representative to figure out which team was drawn against who.

Speaking of the livestream, that was also mishandled as it too had a few technical issues like the audio cutting out or the video cutting to an intermission scene for a majority of the 1.MFL draw. What’s more the FFM chose not to livestream the 2.MFL draw even though it had the ability to, leaving many to question how committed the FFM really is to improving things within the 2.MFL. Regardless the draw was still held by Agim Ibraimi and that concluded the event. Afterwards we asked if Prespa had been invited to compete in the 2.MFL or had the FFM committed to a 15-club 2.MFL to which they answered that the team from Resen did not meet many of their requirements to compete in the 2.MFL.

Amongst the few things that Prespa had not completed were sending out a list of licensed coaches that would represent the club, register at least two youth teams (from U19 to U16) to compete in the Macedonian youth categories, did not have a stadium that was up to specifications for the 2.MFL and more. These requirements not being met was the main justification the FFM had to not invite them and thus Besa’s now vacant spot was not taken. So that’s that right? Well turns out Prespa disagreed.

At 5PM, a few hours after the draw, Prespa announced that it would in fact participate in the 2.MFL. This announcement went against almost everything the FFM said, with the club stating it met all the requirements. Prespa’s statement was not corroborate by the FFM, who later released the full schedule for the 2.MFL that still lacked Prespa’s name. Checking the FFM’s COMET database also shows that Prespa is not registered to compete in the 2.MFL

It seems likely that the feud between FFM and Prespa will continue on after this article is released, but we doubt that in the future the club will be admitted in to replace Besa and they do actually meet all the requirement.

And finally, as if enough had not gone wrong, Novaci was added into the Cup to replace Besa after the Cup draw was concluded. With the previous withdrawals of Gostivari and Voska Sport, the Cup had already been shrunk to 30 teams giving Vardar and Struga a bye into the next round. With Besa also withdrawing, that meant one of the teams in the pot of smaller teams would also go into the second round. That lucky team would end up being Pchinja, as the team from around Kumanovo were gearing up to compete in their first ever Macedonian Cup appearance. As Pchinja had been drawn with the empty spot given by Besa, the club will now have to host Novaci in a first round encounter.

Overall, a ton of things have gone wrong for what was hoped to be a fresh start to Macedonian football. Whilst Shkendija and Vardar’s successes in Europe continue to give Macedonian clubs something to hope for alongside the anticipated arrival of VAR for this season, the FFM needs to sort out the kinks in their operation if they’re to truly try and stop the rot that the new leadership had to inherit. Macedonian football is still behind many of the trends in several footballing nations worldwide and a better effort needs to be placed to make sure that the FFM reaches the targets it has set itself. Many things are going in the right direction, but the things that are stagnating like the domestic competitions cannot be left stagnant for too long without the risk of them backsliding.

The fields of Pelagonia are a wonderful sight. You need only drive from Prilep to Krushevo to see their beauty which gives many in the small villages that dot the plains a simple life. In the middle of that path you will discover the village of Golemo Konjari, just down the road from its smaller sibling Malo Konjari. From a simple glance you could mistake it as a village like any other within the boundaries in and around Prilep, but within it lies one of a few football clubs in Macedonia who have fought against the odds to achieve success relative to their size.

FK Golemo Konjari are a club with enough history to write a book about. The original club Bratstvo was founded in the 1960s and would reach the heights of the regional divisions during the Yugoslav period of Macedonian football. Through its success at climbing the pyramid, Bratstvo got to face teams like Rudar Probishtip, Ohrid, Bregalnica Shtip, Kamenica Sasa and many more, eventually securing a spot in the Second Macedonian Republic League and soon the inaugural 2.MFL.

Unfortunately for the village club that would give us one of Macedonia’s all time greats Goce Sedloski, the club was not able to cope with the demands of 2.MFL football. It eventually would drop to the 3.MFL and dissolve a few years after. The death of Bratstvo did not mean the end of football for the village, as in 1999 the club was refounded as FK Golemo Konjari. After navigating their way through Prilep’s municipal leagues, they became a stable side that occupied the 3.MFL mostly finding itself in midtable spots.

Eventually fortunes began to turn for the better in the small village, as they began mounting title challenges for a spot back in the 2.MFL. Their main obstacle that time and time again would halt their pursuit were the falls of many bigger teams like Tikvesh, Vardar Negotino, Borec, Pobeda and Kozhuf or the rise of many small clubs like Lokomotiva Gradsko, Bratstvo Zhitoshe and Partizan Obrshani. Finally though in the 2024/25 season, they were able to catch that lightning in a bottle they chased for so long and secured the 3.MFL South title for the first time. Though they would go on to lose their playoff match against Teteks in penalties, thanks to the withdrawals and bans of Gostivari and Voska Sport, Golemo Konjari were one of the two clubs selected out of the three losing playoffs teams to go up, giving them their spot amongst the big city clubs.

When stories like this surface, many expect the club to be handily supported by a wealthy benefactor like in the case of Voska Sport or a municipality to step in and take care of the team such was the cases with Lokomotiva Gradsko. In FK Golemo Konjari’s case, it was neither. Golemo Konjari for the most part is a club that has made its rise up the ranks thanks to the work of the people that came before and after. It was in the 1980s when the club’s offices and changing rooms were constructed alongside the fence that surrounded the pitch thanks to funding brought in by its own board. Through the work of those that came after, care has been given to make sure the stadium is in the best shape it can be.

With promotion to the 2.MFL, the club has recently started preparations for what will be their biggest challenge. This season’s 2.MFL will see the league reduced from 16 clubs to 14, with 5 automatic relegations spots and 3 relegation playoff spots back into the 3.MFL. On top of that, the club will also have increased financial burdens, such as the cost of matchday officials, security and first aid, higher standards of maintenance and more. With all that said, I travelled to Golemo Konjari to meet with and speak with the club’s president Toni Danoski to get an idea of how things are going for this season’s biggest underdogs.

Danoski, who previously played for Bratstvo and Prespa in the 1980s, had become the president of the club back in 2020. He was amongst Golemo Konjari’s founding members after Bratstvo was dissolved and had worked for many years to bring the club back to the heights it used to compete in.

“After 2-3 years we got into the 3.MFL and we became one of the longest standing members alongside Prevalec that never went up or down. Then our luck turned for the better, but it wasn’t just luck but also our hopes, dreams, good ideas and all that got us our spot in the 2.MFL” said Danoski with regards to last season.

For the new season they brought in Jovica Blazhevski as their manager, as 2.MFL’s restrictions on coaches meant that their previous coach Goran Kasnioski did not meet the requirements set by the FFM of holding a UEFA A license to be listed as the club’s manager. Blazhevski makes up a small number of coaches in and around the “Prilep area” who have the required qualifications and after working many years with ZhFK Poreche in the 2.WFL, he was given the job. Danoski was quick to praise the new manager who he said brought in a new and modern style of football that the club needed.

Alongside the new coach, the club was making an effort to sign players from in and around Prilep’s clubs. Many of the players at the club already have some experience, if brief with the 2.MFL at clubs like Bratstvo Zhitoshe, Rosoman and Pitu Guli, but additional signings would have to be made if the club were to fight for survival in the 2.MFL. In came Pitu Guli’s Valentin Beleski, Kozhuf’s Antonio Shemkoski and the marquee signing of their summer, Zoran Danoski from Bregalnica. Zoran Danoski himself hails from the small village so in many ways his move to the new 2.MFL side was written in the stars.

The club have also begun working on renovating their stadium to get it up to date with the requirements of the 2.MFL. This includes a new fence around the pitch, new stands for fans to be seated, renovating the dressing rooms and many more smaller details. So far the club has managed to finish the dressing rooms and has already mounted a new fence by the village’s elementary school. Many of the helping hands who came to help with the renovations were volunteers who reached out from both the village and Prilep itself. The required renovations are expected to be finished in time for the start of the 2.MFL on August 23rd but in the event that they aren’t the club has already registered Stadion “Goce Delchev” in Prilep as their alternative stadium.

Finally we talked about the club’s expectations for a season that will surely be met with huge difficulties. With relegation/playoff spots covering half the 2.MFL table and Golemo Konjari seen as huge favorites to go down, things do not seem to be too favorable for the village team. However despite the many things that will most likely go against them, this alone won’t be enough to stop the club from trying their hardest.

“Honestly, we entered the league with the ambition to stay up. I don’t see myself as an outsider. Of course its going to be difficult. There will certainly be a fight until the last round and that’s how we play. We are fighters, we won’t give up.” answered Danoski.

Golemo Konjari will certainly be one of the biggest stories of the season regardless of if they’re winning or losing games. A club of their size reaching the heights that they have for a second time is admirable and deserves more recognition. This season will be their biggest test in many years, a battle in the ilk of David versus Goliath that will span the course of several months and maybe even put Golemo Konjari on the brink much like it did with Bratstvo. But beneath all that is a group of people who through their own hard work and the many others who volunteered to help them have brought a small village to the spotlight in the only way they could: football.

Sloga Vinica will be amongst the new 2.MFL sides competing to avoid relegation from the soon to be scaled down second tier from next season. They dominated the 3.MFL East having won 17 of their 18 league games only losing once to Karbinci, and were very convincing in their playoff game against Prespa to seal their spot back in the 2.MFL. However most of their success came thanks to the financial support from 1.MFL side Gostivari, which saw Sloga recruit players like Ivan Nastevski, Antonio Stolevski, Filip Petkovski, Darko Stojanov and many more.

Gostivari and Sloga Vinica began to cooperate from November 1st 2023, through an announcement posted by the then 3.MFL side. The deal between both sides saw Sloga benefit from Enes Usta and Gostivari’s deeper pockets and a link between the two clubs which saw players like Asan Rifadov and goalkeeper Ejup Sabri Ljochi go between the two clubs. Whilst the stated end goal of the deal was the return of Sloga to the 2.MFL, it wouldn’t be too hard to consider that Sloga could’ve become a home for players from Gostivari to get game time in the 2.MFL once they got there.

With Gostivari withdrawing and then receiving a ban from the FFM, a story that this publication covered in depth, we expected an announcement by Sloga Vinica with regards to how the club will make up for the lost revenue from Enes Usta and Gostivari’s departures from Macedonian football. However we have been left to wonder as the club has failed to make any sort of statement with regards to their sponsorship. First, the club celebrated its promotion by creating Panini-styled stickers for each of their players, of which the first person listed for the club was Enes Usta himself, despite having by this point received his ban by the FFM. Secondly, this publication has attempted to reach out Sloga Vinica twice.

Our first call for comment was before the playoffs and we were quickly rebuffed by the club which stated that they wanted to focus on the playoffs before making any comments. After not receiving any word from them in more than a month, we reached out again before their pre-season preparations began. This time we were told the club would make a statement regarding their sponsorship once their preparations began. But again, our call to comment on what has occurred at the top of the club has not been heard as Sloga have only said they would announce any new player signings or changes to the club in the coming period. As of the writing of this article, we have yet to receive word from Sloga regarding the involvement of Enes Usta in sponsoring the club.

Finally, if we are to believe that Enes Usta has left the club, where are Sloga Vinica finding the finances to compete in the 2.MFL? Their previous stint in the 2.MFL came to an abrupt end after financial issues reared its head over the club and even saw a strike amongst the players take places towards the end of the 21/22 season. We find it hard to believe that the municipality of Vinica would be capable of funding a football club with the kind of players on Sloga’s payroll and considering how upfront Sloga have been over recent years with its internal operations, the lack of any word from the club is jarring. With the club reportedly signing the likes of Nikola Taleski, David Debreshlioski and Iljaz Chilafi for the upcoming season, we feel that more questions need to be asked of the team that is expecting to compete to stay within the 2.MFL.

Newly promoted 1.MFL side Makedonija Gjorche Petrov have officially announced the signing of Frenchman Louis Mickaël Sylla in what could be described as the most unorthodox way of persuasion. Over the course of several months, Sylla who is also well known as LMS on his Instagram and TikTok pages has been camping in front of Makedonija GjP’s stadium in the hopes of catching the attention of the club and potentially sign a professional contract with the “Lavovi”.

Among other tactics he used would include being present at most of the club’s training sessions, trying to speak with players and coaches and much more. This all got to the point where LMS was present at Makedonija’s trophy lift when the “Lavovi” won the 2.MFL title in May. Eventually after months of trying, he would catch the attention of Makedonija’s owner Imer Asan who posted to his socials that he would be given a chance.

“As president of FK Makedonija Gjorche Petrov, I spoke directly with LMS aka Louis Mickaël Sylla. I made it clear: No one signs a contract here just for marketing or media buzz. That would be a lack of respect for all the players who’ve worked hard since childhood to reach professional football. But let’s be honest — Travelling the world alone, with no agent and no guarantees, driven only by a dream... That takes courage. And sometimes, courage deserves a door to open.” read part of Asan’s statement on Instagram.

This is not the first time that LMS had done such a stunt, as the Frenchmen had previously attempted to get the attention of sides in France, Albania, Malta and Guinea with varying levels of success. He had apparently even signed a contract with Saudi Pro League side Al-Shabab, though nothing of the deal came of it apart from two separate articles talking about the incident.

Though this in many ways can be seen as funny, there is a huge risk that the move might end up similar to many of the transfers made by Pobeda in the 2022/23 season. Among the faces who came to Prilep that window were Kal Malass and Eric Amo, both of whom had questionable career trajectories before they eventually ended up signing with the “Majmuni”.

It should also be noted that so long as LMS isn’t written down in the FFM’s Comet database as a player for Makedonija Gjorche Petrov, that we won’t know if his deal is just a trial or a full professional contract with the club.

Shkendija progress to the second qualifying round of the UEFA Champions League as they managed to take care of TNS 2-1 in extra time in the second leg in Skopje. With this result their next opponents will be Romanian champions FCSB with the first game between the two sides being held in Skopje.

Today’s win also means that Shkendija are just a single successful round from reaching at least the Conference League proper, which would make them the second team to achieve that feat since Vardar did so in 2017/18. That being said, Shkendija are among many Macedonian clubs to have found itself in this position and are aware of how difficult that final step towards a spot in Europe truly is.

Disappointment for the Saints

The New Saints now drop down directly into the Conference League qualifiers and will face Luxembourgish side Differdange 03. This is in contrast to last year’s qualifiers which saw the club find itself in the league phase Conference League. Today’s performance was fairly bleak for the Saints as they were on the backfoot for the majority of the match.

With the exception of a goal from experienced striker Jordan Williams, TNS were just not able to give themselves any room to breathe against the “Kuq e Zi”. This all eventually boiled over into extra time where TNS were not able to have a single shot across 30 minutes, have 34% of possession and concede a late own goal to give Shkendija the winner.

Shkendija give it all and approach their most important hurdle

Shkendija can feel happy with their performance against TNS as they stomped their more experienced Welsh counterparts. They had an impressive 20 shots and 10 on target, had a majority of the ball, began the game with an early lead through Fabrice Tamba and dominated the proceedings in extra time. They can only feel aggrieved that TNS’ Nathan Shepperd had a phenomenal game in goal and were it not for him they’d have won more convincingly.

Their next opponent will be FCSB, who will pose an even bigger challenge than TNS did. The Romanian side are regulars in the latter European qualifier rounds and have on many occasions competed in the group stages of the Champions League, Europa League and most recently the Conference League. Victory over them will be difficult but as we previously mentioned, winning this round will guarantee Shkendija a spot in at least the league phase of the Conference League. Losing however would mean that Shkendija would drop to the third qualifying round of the Europa League, and another loss after that will see them in the Conference League playoffs.

A win is a must for Shkendija if Macedonia is to keep its European coefficient at a level where it avoids being one of the five worst performing leagues, and thus taking away one Conference League spot from any club in the 1.MFL. Add to it the current unpredictability of the 1.MFL and many of its clubs not being ready for the European challenge, the consequences of poor performances in European qualifiers could cause major issues for the 1.MFL’s future.

Vardar took care of business against La Fiorita in the first leg of their UEFA Conference League first qualifying round. Thanks to the contributions of Azer Omeragikj, Rogers Mato and a deflected Georgije Jankulov shot, the "Crveno-crni” will feel confident going into the second leg in San Marino.

As for the other two participants in the UECL, Rabotnichki were dominated by Torpedo Zhodino of Belarus whilst Sileks fell apart after going down to 10 men in the second half against Montenegrin side Dečić. Both teams will now play their second legs at home with the quiet hope that they can overturn their deficits and reach the next round in spectacular fashion.

Vardar took their time to deal with La Fiorita

Vardar were the dominant team throughout their game against San Marinese side La Fiorita, winning with a score of 3-0. The hosts began proceedings by being the more aggressive of the two sides, seeing them put up a total of 8 shots to La Fiorita’s single attempt in the first half. Despite the heavy bombardment from Vardar’s attack, it wouldn’t be up until the 47th minute when Azer Omeragikj perfectly dealt with Goran Zakarić’s cross to get the ball past keeper Matteo Zavoli.

After the first goal was scored, things became much easier for Vardar as a shot from Georgije Jankulov would be deflected by defender Mirko Drudi into La Fiorita’s goal. And just as the celebrations for that goal were done, Rogers Mato was able to find himself dribbling past the defense with his shot from outside the box bringing the game up to 3-0.

Sileks’ decent start falls apart by the second half

Sileks return from their journey to Tuzi knowing that they’ll need to find at least two goals to win their tie against Dečić or perhaps take it into extra time. The “Krateri” were able to keep a small majority of the possession in the first half whilst soaking up most of Dečić’s attacks. That was until Andrej Bajovic found the first goal of the game with his well placed shot just sneaking through Ljupche Djekov’s fingers.

The second half would be the breaking point for Sileks as new arrival Martin Mirchevski would receive a straight red card after an awful tackle on one of the opposition players. From then on it was Dečić’s game to lose and after Ibrahima Ndiaye got the second, there was no turning back for the Montenegrin side.

Rabotnichki fail to impress against Torpedo

Of the three clubs that played today, Rabotnichki were the biggest disappointments. After Goran Stanikj left to focus on his duties as the Macedonian under-21s manager and Bojan Markoski was appointed as his replacement, the club has sought to replace a huge chunk of its squad. The result is a team going into European qualifiers with little to no chemistry being exposed badly by a more cohesive unit.

In not a single significant statistic were Rabotnichki able to get the upper hand against Torpedo as Pavel Sedko, Vadim Pobudey and Steven Alfred scored the goals to give the Belorussian side the upper hand going into Skopje. If Rabotnichki want to even have a chance of going into the next round, the team will have to quickly find a system that suits the manager and the former and new players.

Shkëndija get the best result they can hope for as they hold Welsh champions The New Saints to a 0-0 draw in Oswestry. With the return leg being held in Skopje, their draw could mean that the “Kuq e Zi” can go into their next game with a bit of confidence.

Though this is certainly a great result for Shkëndija in their hopes to compete in the proper rounds of European football for the first time in the club’s history, that is not to say the game today was in their favor. TNS decisively held the advantage in the first half, with Shkëndija having to do more in the second half just to keep up with their more experienced Welsh counterparts.

TNS had the chances, but not the final product

No doubt TNS will be leaving a bit down after the game thinking that they should’ve done more to beat Shkëndija on home soil. The team that represented Wales in the UECL League Phase was unable to convert any of its 11 shots or 57% possession into an attack that could break through the “Kuq e Zi” defense.

Though the result itself is certainly disappointing, given that Shkëndija previously lost to Haverfordwest County in the 2023/24 UECL qualifying campaign, TNS have the European pedigree to mount a comeback. TNS and Shkëndija have previously faced in European qualifiers, with Shkëndija coming out on top in the 2018/19 UCL qualifiers with an aggregate score of 5-4. However it should be noted that TNS left that round with a 4-0 win in Skopje, which could certainly give some hope to their fans.

Impressive debuts for Gaye and Fetai

Baboucarr Gaye and Imran Fetai played well with the high expectations placed on the pair. Though both arrived as the best performers from clubs that lost their spots in the 1.MFL last season, they managed to impress in what was their competitive debuts for the club. Gaye especially came in with important saves during both halves to keep Shkëndija in the game, whilst Fetai formed a formidable partnership with captain Klisman Cake.

Endrit Krasniqi meanwhile returned to the Tetovo based giants from his time in Suhareka and played alright, however the chances that Shkëndija were able to produces saw him later replaced with fellow returnee Mevlan Murati in the 67th minute.

The Football Federation of Macedonia have begun efforts to reduce the availability of information through their COMET database including reducing the amount of information about football clubs available, removing the search bar, making players, coaches and staff harder to find and recently removing the ability for clubs to generate reports of goal scorers, appearances, minutes played and more.

Since the early 2010s, the FFM have used Analyticom COMET to help with logging its database. The service allows for football associations just like the FFM to keep track of player registrations, league tables, contracts, coaching licenses and many more important details. COMET is used by many others including the Welsh (FAW), Canadian (CSA) and Croatian (HNS) football associations, however their implementation is much more open that Macedonia’s ever was.

For example, the HNS have a platform called HNS Semafor, which allows anyone to look into all the leagues, clubs, players, coaches and more that are registered in the HNS’ COMET database. This allows for many fans to be able to keep up to date with any dealings within their club as long as those changes are added to the database beforehand. This also makes sourcing transfer deals much easier whilst also making many statistics available regardless of the level the clubs play at.

For as long as the FFM have used the COMET system, it has been closed off from being viewed by football fans who want to keep up to date with Macedonian football. This has meant that for many fans to keep track of league tables, match results, transfers and more, they have had to rely on external sources who somehow find ways to access this information. The website MacedonianFootball has become one of the best sources for archived league tables and results, many sports news sites are the only way some fans learn about transfers to and from their clubs as some clubs don’t have social media.

The most damning part is that the FFM used to do the same thing itself, however since the end of 2022, it has failed to keep up with league tables and matchdays in the 2.MFL and stopped publicly posting their Makfudbal publication which saw most transfers or contract renewals get reported. This has meant since at least 2022, the fight for any information in the Macedonian football leagues has been one that journalists have been consistently losing. Now alongside the new restrictions to the internal COMET system, it is becoming very difficult for any publication to keep up with Macedonian football unless the clubs themselves, of which some egregious examples are absent from social media entirely, announce them.

Though this publication has received rumors that the FFM is looking into redesigning its website, we are still unsure if such a thing will include anything that will allow the public to access the FFM’s database any easier.

Today marks the end of “Project Gogov” at Bregalnica as the club has been acquired by new Turkish owners. The announcement comes from today’s session at the municipality of Shtip which passed the resolution for the sale of one of Macedonia’s historic clubs. The sale will include the club, the stadium and the many of the pitches in Shtip, with the new owners becoming responsible for their maintenance as the municipality looks to divest from the club.

During today’s session, the mayor Ivan Jordanov announced that the club would be sold to Turkish owners for approximately €300,000, which would give them an 85% stake in the club whilst the municipality kept 15%. In accordance to the agreement between both parties, the municipality, which will control the club’s operations, and the Turkish owners, who will finance the club, will work together on reconstruction of the East stand. It was also noted that the agreement between both parties would remain in effect so long as Bregalnica competes in the 1.MFL or the 2.MFL, with the club falling back into the hands of the municipality in the case of relegation the 3.MFL.

Since 2019, Bregalnica had been owned by businessman Kiril Gogov, who previously owned the supermarket chain Kit-Go, with which he sponsored a football club from Pehchevo which bore the same name. Gogov arrived in Shtip and set huge expectations, hoping to bring Bregalnica to the top of Macedonian football. Things progressed as expected for the “Plavi” as Bregalnica would gain promotion to the 1.MFL in the 2020/21 season and began to settle as a consistent mid-table team with ambitions for Europe.

However with the sale of Kit-Go to another supermarket chain Viva Fresh in Kosovo, Bregalnica’s fortunes began to turn for the worse. Suddenly the club that sought European football was falling down the crater of relegation just a year after the sale and was then accompanied with failure to return to the top flight at the first time of asking. This was compounded by many other issues, such as a temporary FIFA transfer ban for supposed unpaid wages, financial mismanagement and allegations from the FFM that approximately €2,300,000 was embezzled from funds meant to go to the reconstruction of the new western stand.

Regardless of any of the issues that Bregalnica experienced during Gogov’s tumultuous reign, there will still be a slight air of skepticism considering the club’s past experiences with the previous ownership and the reputation that certain Turkish ownerships have given themselves during their time in Macedonian football.

After months of speculation, the new owner of Tikvesh was finally unveiled to the public. The new majority owner, who bought out 51% of shares of Tikvesh from the Municipality of Kavadarci, turned out to be German born businessman Osman Taş, who previously was president of then Turkish 1.Lig side Eskişehirspor. During his time there he was the president from May 2019 up until November 2019, leaving his position due to the unmanageable financial situation that the club had found itself in before his arrival.

Osman Taş said during the club’s press conference that he chose Tikvesh between a list of 2-3 clubs and that in the future he planned to express his reasonings why he chose them. Though he did not name the other clubs he was looking into, among the many rumors that were circulating in Macedonian football previously was that Pobeda Prilep’s initial buyers would be from Türkiye.

Both him and president Mile Maslarkov stated that the expectations for the 2025/26 season would be a top 6 finish, with future plans to compete in Europe. Additionally Osman Taş revealed that he planned to build a “football triangle” between Germany, Macedonia and Türkiye, with a new academy for Tikvesh being the first step towards that plan. Finally he announced that the club would get itself a club shop and hopes that in the future he, the mayor and Tikvesh’ ultras group “Lozari” can work together to create something special.

Alongside Osman Taş’ unveiling, Emir Shabani was given the reigns as the club’s sporting director whilst Turkish sports presenter Pelin Koç was chosen as the club’s new marketing director.

Shkëndija and Vardar have found themselves having visa issues whilst both clubs are doing their preseason training in Slovenia. Both incidents are unrelated, with Vardar unable to secure visas for some of its players to come to Slovenia, whilst Shkendija have to go back home to get their hands on visas to the United Kingdom to face The New Saints in Champions League qualifying.

According to sources, Shkëndija was trying to secure its visas to the UK whilst it was staying over in Slovenia. Unfortunately however, the club found itself having to leave the country in order to secure the visas back home as logistical issues prevented them from doing so abroad. The club played out a final friendly match against CSKA Sofia that ended 1-1 and is now set to return home. Their friendly with Olimpija Ljubljana has been canceled as a result.

“This was the third friendly held in Slovenia, while the team immediately headed to Tetovo after the match, ending their stay early due to logistical obligations in preparation for the first qualifying match in the Champions League against The New Saints in Wales.” read Shkëndija’s statement after their match with CSKA Sofia.

Vardar meanwhile is dealing with a different issue. According to the same sources, Vardar’s African players are finding it difficult to get visas to Slovenia for preseason training, with some of them stuck in their home countries or in Türkiye waiting to travel to Radenci where Vardar is holding its training camp. This comes down to the EU’s visa policy, in which whilst almost all non-EU nationality citizens within Europe are able to stay for up to 90 days within the Schengen Area, citizens of African countries would need to apply for visas. During Vardar’s friendly against Rapid Bucharest, only Ibrahim Olaosebikan played from the club’s African contingent.