Macedonia beat Azerbaijan 3:1 in the first of two friendly matches in Austria.

Macedonia played a good match under rainy weather against Berti Vogts’ team and after a complete dominance in the first half and solid display in the second, deservedly celebrated a 3:1 win.

Macedonia started with the following line-up: Pacovski, G. Popov, Mitreski, Grncarov, Lazarevski, Georgievski, Despotovski, Sumulikoski, Kurtisi, Trickovski, Ristić. The match was played under Jonuz’s preferred tactics. It was a great start for Macedonia when Ivan Trickovski sent an excellent half-volley after a pass from Kurtisi and scored amazing goal in the 8th minute. Later in the first half Tricko had another excellent opportunity and when everybody thought it was 2:0, the ball had actually hit the side net. Trickovski has used this opportunity from Jonuz extremely well and put an excellent performance. Tome Pacovski had also a good game, saving couple of shots in both halves.

At the beginning of the second half the Azeri team started playing better but it was Macedonia who doubled the lead. Georgievski took a cross, but the Azeri captain Rəşad Sadıqov headed the ball into his own net. Mirsad Jonuz has used all the subs in the second half, except goalkeeper Edin Nuredinoski who is expected to be a starter against Romania, and the match took a different road. Nikolce Noveski took Boban Grncarov place after 45 minutes, Goce Sedloski came on for Igor Mitreski and capped his 100th appearance. Mario Gjurovski entered the match on the place of Stevica Ristić who had rather poor game riddled with mistakes. Vance Sikov went in instead of Slavco Georgievski, Aleksandar Todorovski for Vlade Lazarevski and Baze Ilijoski on the place of Mensur Kurtisi. In the last 10 minutes we saw two more goals. First, Trickovski returned a ball to Gjurovski who has showed his magic by losing an Azeri defender and sending a fabulous shot to make it 3:0. In the last minutes, Azerbaijan managed to pull one back. What looked like a foul over Sumulikoski was not whistled by the referee, game went on, Elvin Mammadov sent a shot after Noveski failed to cover on time and Pacovski was not able to block the shot. Thus, Mammedov set the final score of 1:3 and now Macedonia are on a 5 matches unbeaten run.

To view the match report click here.

Next match is on Wednesday against Romania.