Macedonia 12

 

Goran Pandev (Genoa CFC, Italy)
vs. Israel (1:2) | World Cup Qualifier | 2016 in Macedonia

Look, a lot of my fellow collectors are mocking me for having 12 Belarus shirts. They argue that is too much for a random East European country that is not particularly great in football. They claim I am weirdly obsessed with Belorussian football. But the joke is on them - because now, I also own 12 (North) Macedonia shirts, proving that it is totally adequate, normal and not at all obsessive to own 12 shirts of a random East European national team! Ha!

Jokes aside, this is actually a shirt I really wanted to add to my collection. It is the design JAKO made for Macedonia in 2016 and that the team wore unusually long until 2021 when it was meant to be replaced. Following fan protests against the new shirts, they kept wearing this one until 2023, making it probably the longest worn European national team shirt design in the 21st century (for the design that was protested against, see "Macedonia 9". The picture above shows the first time the shirt was worn, in a lost qualifier match vs. Israel.

This particular shirt was also worn by Daniel Avramovski, who is quite an unusual national team player, at least for a European side. In his 15 years long career, he never managed to play more than 40 games for any club, played in 4 former Yugoslav Republics (Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Slovenia) and 1 former Autonomous Province of Yugoslavia (Vojvodina). He also played in Turkey, were he is still active in the second division. Not a career at the top of European football, but certainly an interesting one. Even better, though: Despite never making it to a top league, he did feature at the Euros, playing 15 minutes against Ukraine at the 2021 Euros.