The Macedonian Futsal A national team will continue its qualification for the 2026 European Championship in Latvia and Lithuania in late January and early February.

The program includes two matches against the favorites in Group 7, the Portuguese national team. The first of the two matches will be played at home, in the "Jane Sandanski" sports hall in Skopje, on January 31st, starting at 7 p.m.

The second match of Group 7 of the qualifiers against Portugal will be played on February 5th, in Odivales, Lisbon, starting at 8:00 PM.

The  head coach of the Macedonian futsal A team, Vasko Skenderovski, has decided to call up the following players:

Goalkeepers:

PETROVSKI Antonio (KMF Project)

STOJANOVSKI Ivan (KMF Forza 2015)

SPASOVSKI Nikola (KMF Osogovo)

Defense:

LEVESKI Zoran (KMF Forza 2015)

ISMAILI Taulant ((KMF Forza 2015)

KRSTEVSKI Ivan (KMF Forza 2015)

CEKA Ismet (KMF Shkupi)

MIHAJLOV Aleksandar (KMF Klimi)

KRSTESKI David (KMF Klimi)

RAMADANI Berat (KMF Forza 2015)

Attack:

TODOROVSKI Martin (KMF Osogovo)

SEFERI Erkan (KMF Shkupi)

NIKOVIC Martin (KMF Klimi)

RAMADANI Jakup (FK Pristina, Kosovo)

BLAGOJEVSKI Mario (KMF Proekt)

Picker

KRSTEVSKI Ivan (KMF Forca 2015)

-Vasko Skenderovski, head coach of the Macedonian futsal team:

"Today we officially started preparations for the upcoming double-header with the Portuguese national team within the framework of the Qualifications for the European Championship 2026, which will be held in Latvia and Lithuania.

We expect two strong matches, which will be a great experience for us against the current two-time European Champion, and the 2021 World Champion, a team that is rightfully included in the top three teams in the world.

Portugal is coming with the strongest squad, unlike our national team, which will be without six standard international players and leaders of our game in the last few years (Leovski, Micevski, Rangotov - these are players who are playing abroad and due to private obligations will not be able to be with us at this gathering, Ziberi - who is also playing in Italy, but is injured, then Daniel De Souza who is playing in Serbia and for administrative reasons is not eligible to play, as well as the domestic player Ceka who is questionable).

We will practically only play with home players, from our championship which is currently on winter break, and we will see how physically prepared our players are for this challenge.

If we add to this the fact that the first goalkeeper Petrovski, as well as the standard Krstevski are not eligible to play in the first match in Skopje due to two yellow cards, it will be very difficult to achieve a favorable result against the European champion without eight players.

But on the other hand, this is a great chance for those who did not get much playing time in the previous matches, as well as the few debutants who I invited to this gathering, to justify the trust.

At the end of the day, the process of rejuvenating the generation must also begin, so we really should not be too worried about appearing decimated, but rather cheer on those who are here with us for the first time and show that they are a real prospect for the Macedonian national futsal team.

We have nothing to lose, and we can gain a lot."