Macedonia U19 will host a qualifications tournament in Skopje with the opponents being the national teams of England, Luxembourg and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

photo by FFM: the U19s celebrate a goal

Coach Goran Stanikj called up 20 players for the preliminary round. There are some absents and the likes of Marko Alchevski, Dimitar Todorovski and Kire Trpchevski are not among the called up players. Stanikj expects a real challenge, especially considering that the teams of England and Bosnia and Herzegovina featured in the Euro U17 championship two years ago with the same generation of players that are now representing their U19 national teams. Interestingly, Macedonia also hosted the qualifications tournament back then and also played against Bosnia and Herzegovina. The match back then ended 0:0, the team was led by Stanikj and several of the players today featured in that match.

Stefan Mitrev – Aarau
Kristijan Kitanovski – Vardar
Matej Andov – Vardar

Georgije Jankulov – Železničar
Bozhidar Mitrevski – Sileks
Aleksandar Gjurkovski – Vardar
Bojan Dimovski – Vardar
Vane Tasevski – Nibbiano & Valtidone
Andjelo Nikolovski – Kit-Go

Agon Elezi – Skënderbeu
Jeton Dauti – St. Gallen
Ivan Nikolov – Akademija Pandev
Vlada Novevski – Vojvodina
Arbi Vosha – Makedonija GjP 

Metodi Maksimov – Rabotnichki
David Toshevski – Rabotnichki
Ediz Spahiu – Shkendija
Muharem Suhejlj – Shkupi
Ersan Hajdari – Aarau
Abdulvahit Murati – Shkupi 

Macedonia faces Bosnia and Herzegovina in the opening round tomorrow, then plays against England on the 16th and 3 days later the final match against Luxembourg. The top 2 teams of each group advance along with a best placed third team.