The senior national team and the U21 team trained together today and played a match which ended 0:0.

Every player is now present after Veliche Shumulikoski was the last player to arrive in Macedonia earlier today.  Shumulikoski played all 90 minutes for Sibir yesterday in a league game so that is the reason for his late arrival.  As for the test match against the U21 team, Ivan Trichkovski did not play as John Toshack decided to rest him because of a busy club schedule with APOEL.

Since Boban Babunski is the manager of the U21 team and the top assistant on the senior national team, John Toshack felt it was a good idea for the players to train together and also scheduled a match.  The U21 team held the senior national team to goalless 0:0 draw.  The match consisted of two halves of 20 minutes each.  Toshack used the game to closely watch the potential candidates on the U21 team with the view of constructing the best team for the 2014 World Cup qualifications.

Toshack opted for a 3-5-2 formation for the senior national team with the following formation:

Bogatinov

Shikov-Noveski-Mitreski

Georgievski-Useini-Muarem-Demiri-Popov

Gjurovski-M. Ivanovski

As mentioned earlier, attacker Ivan Trichkovski did not play nor did defensive midfielder Veliche Shumulikoski.  However, those two guys will take the place of Mario Gjurovski and Muhamed Useini if Toshack sticks with the 3-5-2 formation for the Armenia game.

Meanwhile, the U21 national team played with the following players: Gachevski, Ristovski, Bogdanovikj, Mecinovikj, Siljanovski, Brdarovski, An. Stankov, Spirovski, Nestorovski, Trajkovski and Fazli.

Both the U21 team and the senior national team are in action on Friday.  Macedonia U21 will take on their counterparts from Serbia in the opening game of the 2013 Under-21 qualifiers while the senior national team travels to Yerevan to take on Armenia.  The U21 team plays at 15:00 CET while the senior national team follows at 17:00 CET.  Both games will be televised on MTV.