Robert Popov made one of the biggest transfers for a Macedonian player in the past January and this in a country where he is the first Macedonian international to play. His transfer turned the attention of many Macedonian football fans, especially mine as a Macedonian living in France.
So without any doubting I made a contact with the Auxerres’ fans and they have arranged me to meet Robert for a Sunday afternoon during a football game from the lower leagues. Shortly after the arrival in Auxerre, the long trip and the bad travel facilities were forgotten. On the pitch, Auxerre’s second team was playing against Sochaux’s second team. Some of the most important football personalities from Auxerre were there, including the legendary Auxerre’s coach Guy Roux. Beside the man who spent 40 years in Auxerre, there was the young Macedonian player Robert Popov with his four months experience in the club. He was there turning around the pitch looking for a Macedonian compatriot came all long from Lyon to see him. Finally two minutes later we met us. The first thing that I was interested in was to know how he was feeling in France and Auxerre where he and his family are the only Macedonians:
“I feel great here, it’s true that is not easy when you don’t have any compatriots to spend the time together, but my family is here and that’s the most important. There is one thing that I miss a lot and that’s the night life in Macedonia. However the real difficulty that I have is the French language which is very complicated. Currently I’m taking French classes and I understand very well, so it won’t be a problem for me to speak well enough soon.”
This response imposed the question on Robert’s future in the club where he seemed to be very happy:
“Of course I’ll stay here, I only spent 4 months and that is very short time. I didn’t play a lot this year and I wasn’t surprised because I didn’t make any training with Litex’s first team during the winter’s break, so I wasn’t fit for a difficult championship like the French one is. But after the negotiations between my manager and Auxerre’s stuff, it was confirmed that AJ Auxerre count on me seriously for the next season. Now it stays on me to prepare the start of the next season on the best possible way.”
The first half of the match has finished when Robert’s translator joined us. His name is Denis Petrić, a Serbian international playing in Auxerre. We all decided to go in a bar were we‘ll be able to discuss for the last hour that I was about to spent in Auxerre. On the way for the city center we stepped by at Robert’s house to take his 4×4, and went strike to the bar. There Robert tried to compare briefly the Macedonian, Bulgarian and French leagues:
“The French league is far better than the Macedonian and Bulgarian ones. There is a big difference between the Bulgarian and the Macedonian league, but both of them can’t be compared with the French one. Here in France the football is very physique and you have to be prepared well physically.”
Despite the difference between the Macedonian and French league it was interesting to hear his opinion about the chances of the Macedonian National team in the qualifications for WC2010 against Holland, Norway and Scotland, the team that has defeated France twice in the qualifications for the Euro2008:
“We have a very difficult group but I think that we can make a good result, mostly because the fact that we play better against the bigger football nations and in our group even Iceland can’t be considered as smaller team than our.”

“Arsenal”!