For the second time in less than two years, a question has been raised whether an injury is the cause for Valmir Nafiu’s withdrawal from the U21 national team.

On Friday, Blagoja Milevski, the manager of the U21 national team, announced his squad for the opening match of a new qualifying cycle against Iceland on June 11. Valmir Nafiu was missing from the team, Milevski saying that he has an injury.

However, yesterday, APOEL’s official website announced that Nafiu was among 22 players called up for Sunday’s fixture versus Ermis. Fast forward to today and there was Nafiu on the bench. He was ultimately an unused substitute, but Nafiu was available and sitting on the bench.

So, this once again begs the question whether Nafiu was really injured. If he was hurt, why would APOEL include him on the bench for today’s game? This requires an explanation by the Macedonian federation. This kind of behavior can not be tolerated.

Furthermore, Nafiu was actually the captain for Macedonia U21 in the last match, a friendly against Slovenia U21 back in March. So, Milevski entrusted Nafiu to captain Macedonia U21, and now this? Something doesn’t add up.

Nafiu has flirted with Albania in the past, newspapers there often writing that he would switch to them, but this is getting ridiculous. FFM is now aware of this information, so hopefully they will respond about what is going on with Valmir Nafiu.

As previously mentioned, this is the second time something like this has happened with Nafiu. Here is our article from his suspicious withdrawal from the U21 national team back in September of 2013.