Sports.

The Macedonian football federation was in the media recently for some heavy scandals, and new scandals keep coming, like there is no end to it.

A governmental labour inspection body, found out that there are less than 100 professional players in the Macedonian first league. There are seven clubs without even one registered player. The players were playing illegal, they were not employed and the clubs were not paying social insurance for them.

There are some irregularities even in the Macedonian Football Federation (FFM), where some of the employees are illegally employed. This is a confirmation of previous media rumours, which said that the Macedonian Football Federation is not trying to solve those problems on purpose, knowing that if they start taking actions against the clubs, they'll have to shut down almost all of the Macedonian football clubs.

In the football club Vardar, the inspectors discovered that there are only 10 people employed and all of them are coaches. The club has no contracts with players and wages and social insurance hasn't been payed since January 2006. Pelister has 20 players, but not one of them has a professional contract. Pobeda has only 6 employees and no one of them is a player. They have 22 players, 4 of them are foreigners and all are without professional contracts. While Renova has only 7 professional players. The other 13 players are registered as amateurs and students.

There are in fact only 3 professional clubs in Macedonia, and even the general secretary of the Macedonian Football Federation, Lazar Mitreski turns oud he had a fake diploma from faculty.

There is more, only one day after these scandal were announced in the media, Macedonian NT coach, Srecko Katanec announced his resignation in case the president and the general secretary of FFM lose their positions.

The current situation in the Macedonian Football has negatively effected on him and he said: "I don't want to work with other people. If there's a problem and if they try to change the president and the general secretary, than that means that they will change me as well. The new people that will arrive can also employ a new coach, I don't want to work like that. I've been brought here by Hari (Haralampie Hadzi-Risteski - the president of the MFF) and Laze (Lazar Mitrovski), so I will leave with them in the case that they have to leave. I've informed the president Risteski about all this and I said the same to him - I'm leaving if they are leaving."

There is even more....the situation is so bad that FIFA could dismiss Macedonia from participation in matches.

Macedonian Police sealed the building of the federation late on Monday evening and tuesday night the secretary general Lazar Mitrovski was arrested. The situation in Skopje was monitored by UEFA, Utrinksi Vesnik reports. The Macedonian Football Federation chairman Hari Hadjiristevski said that there will be serious reaction directly from the Macedonian cabinet, the newspaper added.


MD: This is unbelievable, so involved in all these scandals, even Katanec is about to leave. No wonder Macedonia means nothing in football. Or as Jadransport said, "Can we even call this football?".

[Jadransport]

Posted by Macedonia Daily on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 12:19 am | Permalink