Keane must wait for 50th goal, says Jonuz

THERE will be more than a football match on the horizon when Giovanni Trapattoni lands with his Ireland team in an airport named after Alexander The Great just outside Skopje tonight.

The boys in green are back in the town that has haunted Irish teams in the past for a European Championship Group B qualifier against Macedonia.

In reality, this is about so much more than just an international match.

For a start there’s the match venue, the new City Stadium which has been rebuilt and named after Alexander the Great’s father, Philip the Second, to you and me.

Not for the first time recently in a re-developed international football stadium, the empty seats will be Irish while the 30,000 or so tickets available to locals have been snapped up.

Then there’s the name of the stadium and the honour bestowed on the memory of Philip the Second, an historic figure long since involved in a tug of war between the Macedonians and the Greeks.

Throw in a general election with polls opening just hours after the final whistle, and you can see why the home team are keen to avenge their 2-1 defeat in Dublin.

“The new stadium will be a major motivation for my players and for me,” the Macedonian coach Mirsad Jonuz said yesterday.

“This will be the first game on our newly built stadium and we expect 30,000 Macedonia fans to come and celebrate. We also want to improve on what happened to us in Dublin. It was our intention to improve our performance, even in the away game, but we were shocked by the two early goals which were unfortunate.

“Even after those goals went in, I believe we played good football in Ireland and we will try to play a good football again in Skopje.

Like Giovanni Trapattoni, Jonuz is only now getting his full squadtogether after the late arrival of Italian Cup winner Goran Pandev from Inter Milan and Dinamo Kiev defender Goran Popov.

Jonuz has called youngsters Stefan Ristovski and Dishan Savich up to replace the injured striker Barjam Fetai and defender Alexsandar Lazevski.

The Macedonian coach watched Ireland’s Carling Nations Cup wins over Northern Ireland and Scotland last week and is well aware of the threat posed by Trapattoni’s team and captain Robbie Keane as he chases a new scoring record for a British or Irish striker.

“I know who is missing for Ireland but they have good substitutes who showed what they can do in the tournament last week. I am not worried by the names of those who will play for Ireland on Saturday, just by their quality and their current form.

“We also know that Robbie Keane is chasing his 50th goal. That is a great achievement and while I don’t like to talk about players, I can say he is one of Europe’s top strikers but he will have to wait for another game for that goal.”