Adis Jahovikj’s goal and the win against Slovenia were marked as jubilee by the media, but we still lack one goal and one win for those accomplishments.
Macedonia won against Slovenia 3:2 with Adis Jahovikj scoring the second goal of the match, marking a dream debut for him. And that brought joy to the fans. Macedonia has won 2 consecutive matches against higher ranked opponents and that is surely a sign of some progress being made under manager Chedomir Janevski.
The media have marked Jahovikj’s goal and Macedonia’s win as jubilee – 200th goal and 50th win respectively – but there’s one small mistake in this calculation. Ibraimi’s goal was actually 199th and Macedonia’s win was 49th.
105 were added during the 10 qualification tournaments in which Macedonia took part.
So, where’s the problem? Which is that one extra goal and one extra win? As it was pointed out on our FORUM, FFM considers the 2:1 win against Iran in the friendly tournament in November of 2005 as an official one, but that match was unofficial. As a reminder, Macedonia won against Iran and then lost to Paraguay in the final of the friendly tournament named LG Cup, in which the federation had sent a combined ‘B’ team as a replacement for Romania who were supposed to take part, but cancelled their participation, while at the same time Macedonia’s ‘A’ team played a friendly against Liechtenstein away (which is official by FIFA).
So, the next goal scored by Macedonia will be the 200th and the next win will be the 50th. Macedonia has yet to schedule an opponent for the February friendly date, but it would be far more important if that goal and win came against Belgium in March. And it doesn’t have to be the 200th goal only against Belgium. In fact, it might as well be the 51st win, if Macedonia wins their friendly match previously, just as long as it is a win.