Recap
North Macedonia was solid in 45 minutes of the first match in Skopje, but in the last quarter of the match, Portugal showed their class and won by 23:29. Similar to the last match, coach Lazarov is facing big problems. Key players Filip Taleski, Dejan Manaskov, Goce Georgievski, Mario Tankovski, Pavle Atanasijevic, and Zarko Peshevski dropped out of the team due to various reasons, and this is the youngest selection of North Macedonia in history. At the last World Championship in Kraków (January 2023), North Macedonia stayed without the best players such as Kiril Lazarov, Stojance Stoilov, Filip Mirkulovski, and Borko Risteski, who retired from the national team. Portugal is in big progress in recent years and they showed that in the last World championship, where they were only 1 point away from qualifying for the 1/2 finals. They are class above North Macedonia and should take another convincing win.