After the disappointing result from the match against Israel, the daily Macedonian sports newspaper Makedonski Sport made an article with the opinion of four former coaches of the Macedonian national team: Nikola Ilievski, Gjoko Hadzievski, Dragi Kanatlarovski and Gjore Jovanovski.

{mosgoogle} Nikola Ilievski: Katanec is the one to blame
The results will stay for remembering and now with Katanec we have no results. We have team for much better results. We have at least 30 good players who play abroad and in our league. Katanec’s system worked in other times with other team. His system doesn’t work with this team. He made many mistakes with bad positioning and use of some players like Pandev, Tasevski, Naumoski… He should adjust his tactics with the players and not making the players adjust to his tactics.

Gjoko Hadzievski: Katanec has no respect for the Macedonian football
We expected a lot and invested a lot in Katanec, but we didn’t get any results. He got everything he asked here and he has no respect for the Macedonian football and the Macedonian league. He is never in Macedonia, he comes here only for the matches, he has no respect for our league and the players who play in the Macedonian league and on the other side the Macedonian football federation approves him all the travels he makes to foreign countries to watch the players who play abroad. We invested a lot and got nothing.

Dragi Kanatlarovski: Big disappointment
Besides the wins over the outsiders (Andorra and Estonia) we didn’t get anything more. Macedonia invested a lot to get foreign coach. We expected more from him and now we are on the 5th position on 5 rounds from the end and we have no chance to go higher in the group. Macedonia had bad tactics against Israel and we failed to win the match we had to win.

The only neutral was Gjore Jovanovski who said:
This is the reality of the Macedonian football and we shouldn’t expect more from the current situation. Macedonia should have different strategy and should concentrate more on the youth categories in order to have better results.