The Macedonian U21 national team managed to celebrate a hard fought 1:0 win over their counterparts from Azerbaijan.

After the initial draw and defeat in the opening two rounds, Macedonia U21 celebrated their first win in Group 8 of the UEFA Under 21 European Championship Qualifying. Darko Velkovski, who came on as a sub during the game, scored the lone goal of the match to down Azerbaijan and give Macedonia a much needed boost for the upcoming challenges.

Macedonia was the better opponent during the match, creating several good chances and constantly posing a threat to the visitors’ goal. With one of the strongest squads in the past several years, Macedonia were the favorites before the match and deservedly got the win. 

Trajkovski, Babunski, Alioski, Nikolov, Micevski – all had chances for opening the scoreline but it took substitute player Darko Velkovski to score the first goal of the match which later proved to be the winning goal. Velkovski entered the fray in the 62nd minute and 7 minutes later used Trajkovski’s assist and scored the lone goal. It was a great strike with a left footed shot from outside of the box to the top left corner.  The visiting team had nothing to lose and since then pushed further up and could have spoiled the evening, but Dimitrievski had a couple of saves to prevent Azerbaijan from grabbing a point.

Game highlights:

With this win, Macedonia moved up to third place and now awaits Norway on the 19th of November. Norway are definitely not an unbeatable team and if Macedonia plays on their top level, they could be celebrating another win in just 4 days.

National Arena Philip II of Macedon in Skopje
Referee: Petr Ardeleanu (CZE)
Goalscorer: Darko Velkovski 69′ (M)
Yellow cards: Dorian Babunski, Martin Blazhevski (M) – Seyidov, A. Abdullayev, Aliyev (A)
Red cards: /
Macedonia: Dimitrievski; Ristovski, Alioski, Najdoski, Dragarski, Blazhevski (62′ Velkovski), Nikolov (80′ Ashkovski), Micevski, Da. Babunski, Do. Babunski (61′ Naumchevski),Trajkovski.
Azerbaijan: Sadigli; Qarayev (79′ E. Abdullayev), Guliyev, Alkhasov (84′ Eyubov), Yunuszade, Ahmadov, A. Abdullayev, Aliyev, Ramazanov, Erat, Seyidov.