As Macedonia is still sobering up after the national celebration which erupted on Monday evening, as the winning Vardar handball club held a triumphant parade across Skopje with the Champions League trophy, enjoy the pictures from this, but also from the 2017 welcoming ceremony.

In 2017, Vardar won the title in a dramatic political moment when, as a result of years of international pressure, Zoran Zaev was on the verge of taking over the Government and implementing his promise to his backers to rename Macedonia. The ceremony was organized by Skopje Mayor Koce Trajanovski, in a second such event which set the tone for yesterday’s welcome – an open top bus, slow drive through the city’s main boulevards followed by hundreds of cars and biker groups, passing underneath the Macedonia Gate and gathering around the Alexander monument… The first such celebration was held in 2011, for the Macedonian basketball team which broke all expectations and ranked 4th in the European Championship, defeating Greece in the process.

Mayor Trajanovski proudly marched with the players in 2017. Yesterday, Zaev’s ally, Skopje Mayor Petre Silegov, was doing his best not to be noticed in the crowd, as the multitude chanted “Never North, Always Macedonia”. A series of delays in the flight, paid for by the city of Skopje, prompted speculations that the celebration is being undermined and postponed as late as possible, to dissipate the crowd. If this was the idea, it failed, as the estimated 100.000 people faithfully waited for the team, while all across Skopje people lined the streets holding the red and yellow flags – the current one as well as the old “banned” Kutles flag.

Either way, the Zaev regime, which made a point of meeting and richly rewarding the players despite the obvious political non-alignment, in a much more reserved ceremony held today, is being careful in how it handles the political fallout. The celebration on Monday evening proved that the Macedonian people have been pushed and humiliated for a long time, and are anxious to be heard.