From now on, we will have a monthly feature on our website where we will award one Macedonian player with the best player award for that particular month. For August, the race came down to three players but our website chose Vance Sikov from Volyn.
For August, the race for best player of the month came down to Vance Sikov, Stevica Ristić, and Agim Ibraimi. However, after a careful analysis, our website came to the conclusion that Vance Sikov deserved to be player of the month. Sikov, as a defender, scored two goals for Volyn from Lutsk in four games during August and was named in the team of the round in Ukraine for two consecutive weeks. Another big reason why Sikov was given the edge is that he plays in a much better league than either Ristić or Ibraimi. The Ukrainian league is ranked 8th in Europe, according to the latest rankings, while the Slovenian league, where Ibraimi plays, is ranked 35th. Meanwhile, Ristić plays his club football in South Korea with Suwon but that is another league that is much weaker than the Ukrainian league.
When it comes to the statistics of Ristić and Ibraimi, Stevica scored three goals for Suwon in five games while Agim had three goals and three assists for Maribor. The thing that hurt Ibraimi is that two of his goals and assists came against one team in Mura, a newly promoted club, who presented no problems for Maribor. Ibraimi’s club won that game 6:0 but without the Mura game, Agim had one goal and an assist during the month of August.
The Volyn manager, Vitaliy Kvartsyanyi, has praised both Sikov and his CB partner Ján Maslo repeatedly as big reasons for the good start by the Ukrainian club in the early part of the season. A respected member on our forum has watched Sikov on several occasions and he has reported positive remarks regarding his performance. Sikov is a tall CB who played out of position at RB under Mirsad Jonuz, the former manager of the Macedonian national team. Due to this fact, Sikov received plenty of criticism from the Macedonian fans but the person to blame was Jonuz who decided to play him out of position at RB. Sikov should get the opportunity to play CB under the new manager John Toshack and he can then be evaluated properly by the fans regarding his abilities at his natural position of CB as opposed to RB.