With EHF Champions League experience for his club, HC Metalurg, Macedonian right back Martin Velkovski, is well-experienced travelling around Europe for games, but as an important part of the Macedonian U21 men’s squad at the IHF Men’s Junior World Championship in Algeria, the 20-year-old is walking on new ground.

“It’s my first time in Africa,” said Velkovski, who has played just over an hour of handball in Algiers so far. “One week ago, we went to Qatar to get used to the weather and it’s OK here - the conditions for playing are good to play in.”

With a 29:22 win in their tough opener against Russia completed, the young Macedonians eased past IHF competition debutants Burkina Faso 48:20 last night in a game where Velkovski and his teammates kept up their dominant pace for the whole 60 minutes.

“You never know when the injury is coming, so you have to concentrate for the whole 60 minutes,” said Velkovski, who has scored three goals in the two matches so far. “We rested our first team a bit so the bench helped to do their part and we won by 28 goals, so they proved that they can play too; it’s very important to have a good bench for games like this.

“The bench prepared for Burkina Faso in training,” he continued. “But we have a big match with Tunisia next which is very important and it was good we could rest some players.

“Burkina Faso impressed me because they played very good and with their hearts, they don’t have a lot of international experience, but they play for their heart and for their country.”

That much against Tunisia, later tonight (18:00 hrs local time) would see Velkovski’s side move up to six points and have an eye on the eighth-finals.

“It’s going to be hard to play Tunisia,” he said. “They play good one-on-one and play strong but we are well-prepared; we played against Qatar just before and they played similar handball so we’ll do good.”

And a word for the fans back home in his handball-crazy nation? “We’ll try to do our best to make them happy - it’s hard to come here because it’s too far from Macedonia but I say a big thank-you to all our fans watching and supporting us.”