World Cup playoffs against Portugal: Why Nordmasedonia plays in six year old jerseys

Northern Macedonia is in the World Cup qualifier before its greatest success. Help should help a jersey that the players accompanied for six years.

• a lot of excitement around Nordmasedonia home jersey
• World Cup playoffs: Nordmasedonia credited Italy out

When the players of Nordmasedonia enter the grass of the Estadio do Dragao on Tuesday and there in the final of the World Cup playoffs against Portugal want to deliver the next football star hour of their country, their hopes rest on a piece of fabric.

The special jerseys of the Northern Mazedonians deliver the good Omen, which in the end in Tickets for the final round in Qatar Münden.

They are jerseys in that design that brought them in November 2020, when they were for the first time for an EM-final round, luck. But that alone has not taken care of that Nordmasedonia has been in the same piece of fabric for six years. Rather, it was the general indignation over the jersey originally planned for the EM 2021.

Even the then captain Goran Pandev, to which in Germany after the Blamablen 1: 2 in the World Cup qualifier last March is painfully recovered, complained about the jersey of the German supplier Jako. Reason for the criticism: The fabric has a darker rotton than usual - and thus would be more the national colors of Portugal.

After an online petition that had found more than 16,000 supporters, Muamed Sejdini, the president of the Nordmazedonic Football Association, apologized, and promised that his country at the European Championship finals will compete in the old jerseys.

a lot of excitement around Nordmasedonia home jersey

However, that the jerseys then developed into a politician before the first matchday of the European Gameday, but this time had nothing to do with the national colors of Northern Matteronia: instead, Greek politicians foamed for a missing "N" on the jerseys.

Thus, as usual, the abbreviation of the National Football Association "Fudbalska Federacija Na Makedonija". Unlike the republic, this had not renamed a quarrel with Greece after years.

In a letter Bat Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias to use his Northern Mazedonian counterpart, "NM" for Nordmasedonia or "RNM" for Republic of Nordmasedonia as acronym and also change the bandage name.

As an independent organization, which as such receives no state money, replied Foreign Minister Bujar Osmani, but this would not contradict the Prespa Agreement, which completed the dispute in 2018. Thus, despite the dispute with the neighboring country, the jerseys were used - and accompanied Nordmasedonia to the current World Cup qualification.

World Cup playoffs: Nordmasedonia credited Italy out

There, the small country threw 2.1 million inhabitants in the past week sensational European champion Italy from European playoffs. The 1-0 in Palermo is "not writing with words," says National Darko Churlinov: "It was a crazy feeling to win against the European champion."

After the EM participation, Nordmasedonia in the final against Portugal could therefore qualify for a World Cup finals for the first time: "Hopefully it's such a day on which one can say, we've written history," says Churlinov: "That would be A moment that stays all life. "

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And in the case, the jersey should probably remain - at least to the World Cup final round.