North Macedonia can mix it with the best so England must be careful

N orth Macedonia arrive at Old Trafford for Monday’s Euro 2024 qualifier against England as underdogs but should not be underestimated. Just ask Germany and Italy, who faced them in the last World Cup qualifiers and suffered home defeats.

When North Macedonia qualified for Euro 2020, it could be argued they did so only thanks to a new Uefa invention that allowed countries to get there via the Nations League. The team from a Balkan state with a population of 2 million topped a group in section D – the lowest of the lot – that also contained Armenia, Liechtenstein and Gibraltar, then beat Kosovo and Georgia in the playoffs.

But North Macedonia have proved they can mix it with the best. Although they lost all their games at Euro 2020 (3-1 to Austria, 2-1 to Ukraine and 3-0 to the Netherlands) they fought bravely and played some good football, with performances better than results. In the qualifiers for Qatar 2022 they made their mark with those landmark victories over two traditional powerhouses.

North Macedonia finished second in their group to Germany but ahead of Romania and Iceland. A 2-1 win in Duisburg brought national rejoicing and the team stunned Italy in the playoffs in Palermo before losing to Portugal. The current coach, Blagoja Milevski, nicknamed “Sir Bobby”, shares the credit with Igor Angelovski, who was in charge for six years until July 2021.

Progress has been remarkable for a team who in October 2015 were ranked 136th in the world by Fifa and not long ago often played home games in front of 1,000 spectators. Bigger successes in basketball and especially handball meant that at one point football appeared to have lost its status as North Macedonia’s most popular sport.

It illustrates how significant