A lone goal by Piątek gave Poland a win in Skopje over Macedonia in the third round of the 2020 EURO qualifiers.

photo by Filip Zdraveski: moment of the match

Coach Igor Angelovski fielded exactly the same team from the last match against Slovenia on the road. Poland started with one attacker in Robert Lewandowski leaving Krzysztof Piątek on the bench.

The first home chance came in the 4th minute when Elif Elmas fired a good shot that Łukasz Fabiański failed to catch, Ilija Nestorovski tried on the rebound but a Polish defender cleared for a corner kick which resulted into Nestorovski heading the ball centimeters over the bar.

The whole first half did not see any other serious scoring chance. Only few attempts on both sides that did not resulted into threats.

Piątek entered the field at the beginning of the second half and right away caused problems. In the 47th minute he broke the dead lock scoring with something that looked like a bicycle kick.

Kamil Grosicki had a great opportunity to double the lead in the 67th minute but his shot from inside the box luckily went wide.

Finally a chance for Macedonia. Fifteen minutes from time Nestorovski from right tried to score on the far post but Fabiański did his job, while Ezgjan Alioski missed by a mile on the rebound.

An attempt by Aleksandar Trajkovski in last minutes of the match saved by the Polish keeper and that was all the Macedonians managed to do.

Poland won the match scoring from the only shot on target. That is what divides the experienced teams from the rest. Macedonia did not play bad, but simply could not get past a better opponent.

Click here to view the match report.

The next challenge for Macedonia is another home match against Austria on Monday, while Poland now heads home to welcome Israel the same day. Austria beat Slovenia 1:0 at home, while Israel celebrated at Latvia with 3:0.