Goran Pandev: The previous warhorse carrying North Macedonia on his shoulders

It was destiny, maybe, that the ball landed at Goran Pandev’s toes.
A failed clearance bounced off an Austrian participant. Goalkeeper Daniel Bachmann stepped out to collect the ball nevertheless it slipped out of his grasp. Pandev, lurking on the sting of the field, pounced on the free ball and calmly tapped it into the empty aim together with his left foot.
If Patrik Schick’s strike from midway down the sphere was the Euros’ jaw-dropping second, Pandev’s aim for North Macedonia was the feel-good second of the Euros: one of many event’s oldest gamers, aged 37, captaining one of many event’s youngest international locations, scoring the crew’s first aim on their debut at a serious event.
The aim might have been farcical. But there was a fairy story written throughout it, relegating the eventual results of the match, a 3-1 win for Austria, to a footnote.
Ranked beneath India
In 2016, North Macedonia – a landlocked Balkan nation with a inhabitants nearly as a lot as Thane’s – was positioned 27 spots beneath India in world rankings. The 162nd place on the FIFA charts was their lowest ever. Five years later, they’ve moved up precisely 100 locations. Coach Igor Angelovski is assured the crew will rise additional by the point the Euros are over, a daring declare that might be achieved if North Macedonia pocket some factors in opposition to Ukraine on Thursday.
When Angelovski took over the crew in 2015, issues weren’t wanting up. The squad, on the time, was divided on ethnic traces primarily based on gamers of Macedonian and Albanian descent. Pandev, a nationwide crew legend, had retired in 2014.
North Macedonia’s Goran Pandev, left, celebrates with teammates after scoring his facet’s opening aim through the Euro 2020 championship group C match between Austria and Northern Macedonia on the National Arena stadium in Bucharest, Romania, Sunday, June 13, 2021. AP/PTI
The very first thing Angelovski, solely eight years older to Pandev, did was to speak his major man out of retirement. He did that by promoting him the Euros dream, a courageous pitch to a participant who had, until that time, persevered for the nationwide crew for greater than a decade.
Pandev is older than his nation. For greater than half of his life, he has been spearheading North Macedonia’s ahead line. He has made 120 worldwide appearances and scored 38 objectives. Since making his worldwide debut in 2001, he misplaced extra matches than he had gained and Angelovski was the 14th coach he was enjoying underneath with North Macedonia.
Defensive ahead
While his worldwide profession had been a protracted trudge, Pandev acquired legendary standing for his golf equipment in Italian Serie A together with his multi-faceted type of play.
Even throughout his prime years, Pandev was by no means the fittest or most athletic participant on the pitch. But he had nice sport intelligence and a deadly left foot.
He might dribble and shoot, or play the position of a ‘defensive forward’ to perfection; as an alternative of urgent the opposition defenders excessive up the pitch, he might drop deep, assist his facet hold a compact defensive form and block the passing angles for opposition defenders and holding midfielders.
This made Pandev a quintessential Jose Mourinho participant. When the Portuguese supervisor took over at Inter Milan, the membership had loaned out Pandev to third-division facet Spezia to realize expertise. Mourinho introduced him again, performed him as a large defensive ahead and Pandev flourished making necessary contributions in Inter’s treble-winning season in 2009-10.
Wesley Sneijder, his former Inter teammate, referred to as Pandev an ‘underrated finisher’ with a ‘real goal-scoring instinct and vision of the game.’
Return and resurgence
With the nationwide crew, although, Pandev was typically left to do all of it by himself. When he made a comeback in 2016 – after a two-year sabbatical – that had modified. North Macedonia had the likes of Leeds United’s Ezgjan Alioski and Napoli midfielder Eljif Elmas, the youngest participant on their squad.
The new technology of Macedonian gamers, underneath Angelovski, performed with pluck and eked out some eye-catching outcomes as they zoomed their approach up the FIFA ladder. Pandev, even at 37, remained central to the crew’s fortunes.

He scored the aim in opposition to Georgia final November within the Nations League that ensured North Macedonia’s qualification for the Euros. Then, of their final aggressive match earlier than the continental championship, North Macedonia shocked Germany 2-1 in Duisburg. It was Germany’s third-ever loss in World Cup qualifiers.
It was an exhilarating sport during which North Macedonia at instances exhibited abilities that paled the Germans, and guarded their aim as one unit – the crew had come a good distance from the disjointed outfit when Angelovski took over. Joachim Loew, Germany’s World Cup-winning coach, admitted they had been crushed by the higher crew.
The outcome catapulted the chances of North Macedonia pulling off an upset on the Euros. On Thursday, they’ll have yet another likelihood to try this after having misplaced to Austria. And the crew’s oldest participant, Pandev, can be carrying them on his shoulders as soon as once more.