Ademi denies NT retirement rumors: I still wanna play

Central midfielder Arijan Ademi publicly denied that he is about to retire from the Macedonian national team thus denying that has some issues with NT coach Blagoja Milevski.

photo by FFM: Arijan Ademi

The captain of Dinamo Zagreb had not appeared for the Macedonian national team since the Portugal WC play-off in late March 2022, missing all the 6 Nations League matches as well as the November friendlies. That forced rumors that will retire from the national team, but also that he and fellow Dinamo player Stefan Ristovski (also missed the entire Nations League) supposedly had some issues with coach Blagoja Milevski and were boycotting his calls.

None of that happened to be true. Ademi on Tuesday in a statement for Croatian web site Germanijak announced that is still eager to play for Macedonia under Milevski and that he will.

“I decided to continue playing for the national team! I want, I can and I will. I also spoke with the coach, he wants me to be there and I will be” – said Ademi.

“It’s hard for me to say goodbye, because the group of lads there is great, we play for our country, we qualified for the last EURO and we want to do it again. Although, we are in a very difficult group.”

Macedonia is in the hardest 2024 EURO qualifying group alongside reigning European champions Italy, runner-up England, Ukraine and Malta.

“We are aware that it will not be easy, but we have already beaten Germany, then Italy, and we have no one to fear. I know that the Italians will be especially motivated against us, because we kicked them out of the World Cup, but we will also be very motivated and fired up, we believe that we can achieve another big victory” – concluded Arijan.

Croatia born Ademi debuted for Macedonia on 9 October 2014 in a 2016 EURO qualifying match against Luxembourg in Skopje and since has gathered 28 matches and has scored 4 goals. Meanwhile he served a 2-year ban for alleged and never proved doping and featured in all three matches at the 2020 EURO.

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