Midfielder David Babunski has had a change of mind and accepted a call-up to the Macedonian U21 national team for the upcoming qualifier against Israel U21.

Last month, during a press conference, U21 interim manager Vujadin Stanojkovikj mentioned that David Babunski no longer wanted to play for the U21 national team in the future.  It was reported that David only wanted to concentrate on the senior national team, but then manager Boshko Gjurovski did not include Babunski in his squad for the EURO 2016 qualifier against Spain.

Meanwhile, this past Monday, on the 1st of September, Stanojkovikj named 18 players for the U21 qualifier against Israel U21 on 9 September.  That initial list did not include David Babunski.  However, on the same day, the U21 manager also stated that he will call up two more players later in the week.  We know now that one of those two players is David Babunski.  Could the other be Dorian Babunski?  That’s only speculation on my part regarding Dorian, but it’s one possibility.  We shall see who the second player is in the coming days.

The news about David Babunski was reported on Barcelona’s website.  They listed all of their players that will be going on international duty, including Barcelona B players.

In summary, it’s good that cooler heads prevailed.  David definitely needs more seasoning to continue his development as a player.  He is an unquestioned starter on the U21 national team, while that is not the case with the senior national team.  David is an important player for the future, so it’s nice to see that he changed his mind and will once again suit up for the U21 national team.

UPDATE: Odd situation.  The Macedonian federation announced earlier today that Burhan Mustafov and Gjorgji Stoilov are the two players that have been added to the U21 squad.  In their article on ffm.mk, the name of David Babunski wasn’t mentioned.  It’s a weird situation.  The above screenshot of the article on Barcelona’s website was from the 1st of September.  It clearly states that Babunski was called up for U21 duty, but now FFM says that Babunski is not among the 20 players for the Israel clash.  Just more confusion.  Who knows what the heck is going on?