Exactly a month is remaining before the restart of the football season. What can we expect to see in the ‘second halftime’.
Renova enters the spring part with 5 points advantage over Rabotnicki and with the role of favorites for writing the team history. The team from the small village of Dzepcishte are looking good to win a title. They have only lost Ibraimi who has made a spectacular transfer from Renova to Schalke 04. So far, only he has left Renova from the regular playing lads. Rabotnicki are following on the table and they still have, more or less, the same team from the first half but it can easily happen to stay without Savic and Bozinovski because offers for those two are arriving. Metalurg on the third place with the third coach this season. Now, Zikica Tasevski is in charge and he has been handed lowered budget, he has been told to focus on younger players and he has a good chance to provide Europa League spot for next season. Horizont Turnovo has lost two of the most important players – Andonov and Tenekedziev, while replacements have not been announced yet. If they are to fight for Europa they should be looking to sign new players as Turnovo are no longer invincible on Kukus Stadium.
Pelister and Sileks follow on the table. Pelister is likely to stay without couple of talented youngsters. Playmaker Spirovski has already left the club, Kire Ristevski is on a good way to do so, Altiparmakovski is interesting for many clubs… Sileks have unloaded couple of players from the long squad list and traditionally will be looking for players from lower Serbian and ex-Yugo leagues.
Pobeda have started bad, turned things around but will be looking to a difficult half-season now. They have lost their best player, the heart of Pobeda – Ilija Nestorovski who has continued his career in 1 FC. Slovacko. Their other striker, Curlinov also left the team, foreigners Markovic and Jovanovic, Bitola’s trio Stisniovski, Delovski and Altiparmakovski, defender Mitrevski are no longer in the squad as well, while couple of experienced players have joined the Prilep team plus talented youngster Bobi Veljanovski from third league side Mirce Acev. Teteks will be looking to write club history by eliminating Skopje in the cup semi-final and trying to provide European matches next summer in their first first-league appearance after 16 seasons.
Vardar will be looking into an uphill after their financial situation remained as bad as it was and many players have lost patience and asked for contract terminations. They will have to focus on the youth force they have and hope to avoid play-out matches. Vardar have ended this season boycotting, but for the sake of the name let’s hope they will play football on Spring. Milano saw an interesting situation in the championship and decided to use it. Considering no team will relegate directly after the disqualification of Makedonija and Sloga Jugomagnat, Milano will only have to win one play-out match against third or fourth from the second league and provide themselves a new first-league experience for next season, despite losing every match from the first half and scoring only 6 goals in 17 matches.