The Macedonian U21 national team in Skopje officially started the preparations ahead of the strong control tournament that will be held in Croatia.

In addition to our representation, the national teams of Albania, Saudi Arabia and the host Croatia will also participate.

The venue for the control matches will be on  Saint Martin in  Mura.

Our young national team members officially completed their first training yesterday at the "Petar Milosevski" training center, there are two more before leaving for Croatia.

The coach of the U21 national team, Dragi Kanatlarovski, does not hide his satisfaction that Macedonia will have the opportunity to participate in a strong international tournament where quality representations such as Croatia, Albania and Saudi Arabia will take part.

"After consulting with my team about playing as many control matches as possible, in order to be better prepared for the qualifiers that await us in March, I can express my satisfaction that we will participate in such a strong tournament in Croatia. This is our second meeting, the first meeting of this generation was in June where we had a great start, we recorded two wins over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I hope that we will continue in the same rhythm, with quality play, great sacrifice and desire to win. From match to match we will try to improve our game and grow and progress together as a team. We work diligently and hard, we all try our best together in every training session. I am happy about the fact that we have all the players available, Kristian Tasevski will also join us in Croatia. This national team has quality and knowledge, I hope we will continue the winning streak."

We play the first match against Albania on September 23. Three days later, we will compete against the Saudi Arabian team.