Red lions for Ukraine at Euro 2020

The day before, in the confrontation between the teams of Georgia and North Macedonia, the last member of Group C was determined at Euro 2020, in which the Ukraine team will play. Goran Pandev’s only goal brought victory to the Balkan team, nicknamed the “Red Lions”, which reached the final of the continental championship.

Now Group C of the European Championship, like other quartets, has acquired a full-blown form. Here the national teams of the Netherlands, Ukraine, Austria and North Macedonia will play. If we can talk about the previous rivals of the “blue-yellows” before, then we will try to highlight the most interesting things about the Balkans now.

The road to Euro 2020

The North Macedonia national team has been a member of FIFA and UEFA since 1994, but has never before reached the finals of the World and European Championships. At Euro 2020, the Macedonians tried to break qualification in Group G, but finished there only third, after Poland and Austria, but ahead of Slovenia, Israel and Latvia.

The League of Nations came to the aid of the Balkans. Here North Macedonia finished first in Group D4, beating Armenia, Gibraltar and Liechtenstein. Furthermore, Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s team in personal encounters could have completely bypassed the Macedonians, losing 0: 2 away from home, but winning at home 4: 0, but the Armenians as a whole passed the rest of the tournament mediocre, failing to score the maximum points in clashes with the “monsters” of European football such as Gibraltar and Liechtenstein.

As a result, North Macedonia found themselves in the Path D playoffs, where they sequentially beat Kosovo (2: 1) and Georgia (1: 0), earning a ticket to the final part of the 2020 European Championship, which is scheduled for 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. …

Head coach

Since October 2015, the North Macedonia national team has been led by local specialist Igor Angelovski. He is 44 years old and began working as a coach in 2013, when he managed Rabotnichki, where immediately after the end of his career as a footballer he took over as sports director.

In May 2015, Angelovski joined the coaching staff of the North Macedonia national team as an assistant to Lubinko Drulovic. However, he was quickly fired, after which the North Macedonian Football Federation decided not to look for a specialist in the team, but to rely on Angelovski’s national team.

Angelovski did not have the opportunity to lead the Macedonians to the 2018 World Cup. The Balkans joined the group with Spain and Italy, who predictably competed for the first two places. However, North Macedonia finished penultimate, leaving Albania and Israel to advance, and only Liechtenstein could prevent it. However, the young coach was allowed to continue working with the national team and, in the end, it paid off: for the first time in history, the Macedonians qualified for the final part of a major tournament.

To date, Angelovski has played 42 games in charge of the North Macedonia national team, in which his team has won 18 victories, drew 10 times and came off the field defeated 14 times. The goal difference is 61:48, which is quite good for a rather modest Balkan team, which with Angelovski was twice lower with a score of 0: 4 (Spain and Armenia), but gave a fight to the giants in his own stadium – 1: 2 with Spain and 2: 3 – with Italy, and on the road he even took points from the Apennines in qualifying for the 2018 World Cup, playing 1: 1.

Playing style

North Macedonia is a team that prefers to adapt to its rivals. Thanks to this, the Balkans are very flexible when it comes to choosing a tactical scheme for the game. For example, last year North Macedonia played a 3-5-2 formation for most of the playing time, and this year – 4-2-3-1. Both during the game, if necessary, quite easily transform into each other, and therefore there is no need to talk about any special style of play on the part of the Macedonians.

It is important that North Macedonia prefers to give the ball to the opponent. Even in the games against Georgia, Kosovo and Armenia, the Balkans controlled the ball less than the opponent, preferring a vertical style of play and a quick transition from defense to attack. Interestingly, in terms of the number of positional attacks, the Macedonians practically did not give in to any of the previous teams in head-to-head duels, and therefore their football can potentially be called more dangerous for the Ukrainian team, which also like to possess the ball and keep playing attacks for a long time.

It is true that Macedonians are not used to putting pressure on their opponents either. In the division Since the current UEFA Nations League, Angelovski’s team in terms of PPDA, reflecting the intensity of the pressure, is only twelfth or fifth from below, behind teams like Lithuania, Belarus, Luxembourg and Kazakhstan. Therefore, in the fights with the Balkans, you have to be very careful about the problem of the appearance of empty spaces behind, when the team goes on the attack and suddenly loses the ball. North Macedonia can make good use of those moments.

Another characteristic of the current North Macedonia team is their “friendliness” in the fight. The Balkans try not to let their opponents wander, drawing them into martial arts, where, as a rule, they are more successful than the opponent. This calendar year, Macedonians have an average of 211 singles matches per match, of which 50% can win (the corresponding figures for Ukraine are 168 and 48%). Even Italy and Spain, the Balkans regularly managed to get caught up in a fairly tight fight for the ball, so there was no pogrom to speak of. The only time under Angelovski, when the Macedonians could not be effective in individual matches (they won only 40%) in matches with the greats, and ended up in a pogrom for them – the aforementioned 0: 4 away from the Spanish in the national team. for the 2018 World Cup.

The North Macedonia team played 3-4-1-2 against Georgia in the decisive match for the right to play at Euro 2020, which became a 5-3-2 in the defensive phase. The Balkans gave the ball to the rival (possession of 59% to 41% in favor of Georgia), but surpassed it in number of positional attacks (27:25). Furthermore, North Macedonia turned out to be more successful than the opponent in the final phases of the attacks. Of the 5 shots that were not blocked, 4 were made by the Macedonians from outside the area. Georgia had many more strikes (11), but all were from long range, with only one coming from the penalty area. This once again characterizes the defense of the Macedonians, who know how to close and prevent the rival from reaching good shock positions.

Therefore, North Macedonia should not be frankly underestimated, but with the right preparation and motivation, the Ukrainian team should have no problem with three points in a duel with the Balkans. Our team works faster with the ball and is much better at being creative than even our opponent on defense. But the main thing is to minimize the cut in attack and complete concentration in defense.

Leader

Genoa striker Goran Pandev is the undisputed leader of the current North Macedonia squad. It is the leader in number of games played and goals scored in the history of Macedonian football. Now, thanks to Pandev, there are already 114 matches and 36 goals, and Goran played his first match for the Balkan national team in the summer of 2001, that is, 19 years ago!

Another question is that now Goran Pandev is already 37 years old, and next July he will be 38. Most likely, the veteran will do everything possible to play in the historic European Championship in his country and prove his worth in all its glory, but the age still gives to know of yourself. Goran Pandev is not fast, but effective enough. In particular, this season he has an average of only 1.3 hits per game, of which 54% are on goal, which allows the Macedonian to have a good scoring performance: 0.3 goals and 0.2 assists per game.

Pandev’s greatest achievements at club level are victories with Inter in the Champions League, the Championship and the Italian Cup, when the Nerazzurri managed to make a hat-trick at the end of the 2009/10 season. Then the Macedonian was quite an important player in the first team, regularly appearing on the field in national tournaments and European competitions. After Inter, he moved to Napoli, then Galatasaray, and since 2015 he has played for Genoa, with whom he has a contract until the summer of 2021.

Pandev’s peak in the North Macedonian national team, of course, is the current exit to the final of the European Championship. If the Balkans couldn’t achieve this, there is no doubt that Goran would have announced the end of his international career, and so, he still has an incentive to get the continent of football talking about him!

Matches against Ukraine

At the moment, the confrontation between the teams of Ukraine and North Macedonia has 4 games. Two of them were friendly (in 2003 and 2004) and did not give us the best results: a 0: 0 draw at home and a 0: 1 loss away from home.

But when the tie united Ukraine and North Macedonia in the selection for Euro 2016, the “blue-yellows” proved to be twice as strong as the opponent: 1: 0 in Lviv and 2: 0 in Skopje.

The spiciness of the upcoming meeting of Macedonians and Ukrainians at Euro 2020 may be due to the fact that in 2004, when the Balkans beat ours with a score of 1: 0, there was a not entirely pleasant episode surrounding the current coach in boss, and then to the leader of the attack of the Ukrainian team, Andriy Shevchenko. 16 years ago, at the end of the first half, the Macedonian defender hit Shevchenko’s face to the bone with his elbow, and the referee did not record a violation of the rules in this episode. As a result, the blue-yellow striker took off his jersey and walked off the field, bringing a hint of scandal to that match. Later, information appeared that Shevchenko left the field with the permission of the coaches, but in the dynamics everything looked somewhat different, so the experienced fans, and Andrei Nikolaevich himself, will have something to remember before the next battle with Macedonians to be able to add some pepper to the showdown.