The Macedonian U21 national team officially started the preparations in Skopje for the October round of qualifications for the European Championship.

photo by FFM: The Macedonia U21 team at the training ground

Macedonia will host Moldova on October 11, at the “Petar Miloshevski” training center and will travel to Georgia for a match that is scheduled for October 15, at the Ramaz Shengelia Stadium in Kutaisi.

The head coach Dragi Kanatlarovski gave his comments about the upcoming challenges:

– We await the match with Moldova with special desire and motivation, considering what happened in our first clash where we recorded an unfortunate defeat.

– I hope and believe that we’ll manage to play with quality, with fighting spirit and maximum sacrifice, achieving victory against the difficult rival. It is certain that there is no easy opponent in these qualifications and no match can be won easily, so it will be the same in the next matches against Moldova and Georgia.

– To our great pleasure, two of our players, Mario Ilievski and Andrej Stojchevski, have been called up to the A national team of Macedonia. We have ten players who have been the bearers of this generation for a long time and ten young players who we’ll slowly prepare for the next qualifying cycle that follows.

– As for Georgia, we expect a difficult match, where we’ll get a real picture of our team.

– Every call for the national team is a great motivation in itself. The players should understand that the national team is always in the first place and should play and fight for Macedonia with great desire and dedication, no matter who the opponent is.