Vardar announced that from now on no player will wear the number 11 as the club will retire it in honor of the late Vasil Ringov.

photo by 24fudbal.mk

Ringov was one of the all time best Vardar players and it is no wonder that the club decided to retire his number. The decision was announced during Sunday’s commemorative session held in his honor. Ringov passed away on Wednesday.

This season the shirt with number 11 was given to 19-year-old Dimitar Danev who came from Rabotnichki during the summer transfer window as one of the most promising young players in the domestic league. He will have to chose a new number. Just like Ringov, Danev is also a left winger.

The club’s executive director Milenko Nedelkovski informed the public that Vardar is launching an initiative towards the FFM, PUIG and the Ministry of Sports to have the South Stand of the National Arena Todor Proeski in Skopje named after Vasil Ringov. So far none of the four stands has an official name and it will be a good step to start naming the stands, starting with South Stand Vasil Ringov.

Why the South Stand? Well, there is interesting story that the older fans already know. As a winger, Ringov loved to play under the shadow of the South stand, in his time the only covered stand at the stadium in Skopje.

“I will never forget that before each match Ringov would go to our captain Kocho Dimitrovski and would ask him: ‘Kocho please chose the side with the South stand on the left.’ We all knew why he wanted that side, because that side was with shadow. He was the best under the shadow. We the other players sometimes had fun with him, saying: Are you allergic of the sun? But we accepted him as such, we knew that with one move he could decide a match.” – said former Vardar player and former Macedonian national team coach Gjore Jovanovski.