Martin Bogatinov was not even on the bench during today’s Metalurh Donetsk vs. Karpaty encounter.

Karpaty suffered a 2:1 road loss against Metalurh Donetsk but the big story of the match was that Martin Bogatinov did not even make the bench for Karpaty.  Andriy Tlumak started at keeper for Karpaty and conceded two goals while Oleksandr Ilyuschenkov was on the bench as the #2 keeper.

There was no indication that Bogatinov was injured so it seems the Karpaty manager preferred  the 21-year-old Ilyuschenkov as the backup keeper.  With today’s loss, Karpaty dropped to 15th place out of 16 teams with only 7 points after 11 league games in the Ukrainian top division.

Just today, John Toshack included Bogatinov in the Macedonian squad for the upcoming EURO 2012 qualifiers against Armenia and Slovakia.  Both keepers for Macedonia, Martin Bogatinov and Tome Pacovski, are not first choice keepers for their respective club teams.

Meanwhile, Mario Gjurovski has fallen out of favor at Metalurh Donetsk and was not among the 18 players called up for today’s game.  Gjurovski has recently been playing for the youth team.