Seventeen goals already, and February still not finished, is a pretty healthy return for any striker, not least one new to his club and the league in which he is playing. But that’s the start than Bojan Miovski has made to life at Pittodrie – and he hasn’t finished yet.

Even in these days of squad numbers, the number nine shirt is one that carries a weight of responsibility with it, so it was a real statement of intent from both the club and the player when Bojan took it on his arrival in Aberdeen.

“I am happy that I have scored 17 goals until now. I believed that I could score goals here because I know my ability and I know the team I have come to. I watched the team to see how they were playing before I came here, and from this, I knew that I will get some chances, so then it’s up to me whether I score goals or not. I hope I will continue and score more goals this season.”

Not unlike his close friend Ylber Ramadani, who we spoke to in Red Matchday recently, Bojan’s football displays a hunger and desire to succeed for his family at home.

“I grew up in Štip, and I started by playing futsal first, just for something to do. It was a great game to help develop my skills. I never really imagined that I would go on and play football professionally. When I was at school they opened the academy for football, I think when I was maybe 15. I thought, “I want to try this, why not?!”

“So my first time playing real football was when I was around 15. After one year, I was playing very well and so at 16, I started to play with my first team in my city, that was Bregalnica, and then I played with some other clubs in Macedonia too.

“Of course, I wanted to be a footballer, it was my dream, but I didn’t expect it to happen because it is difficult in my home county. You have fewer players who make a success in football from there, because of the infrastructure. They don’t give too many chances to the young home players. It was difficult for me so I knew that I wanted to leave the country because I knew that if I went somewhere else, I could play and I could prove myself. I was very hungry to do well at a club.

“When I was in my home country, I was 18 and I was not playing for my club in the first team, so I had an opportunity to go on loan to Qarabağ FK to play in their Under 19s. Because the first team play in the Champions League, automatically the young team play against the same youth teams from the senior group in the youth Champions League. So they played against Chelsea, Atletico Madrid and Roma.

“It was a great experience to be just 18 to play in those games. Qarabag are a massive club, no doubt they are the biggest club in Azerbaijan, they are on a different level because they have a big training ground, it is all very professional. The first team there is unbelievable.”

All of that was part of the sacrifice that a young player needs to make if he is going to make it to the top, the biggest of those being a life separated from home. Bojan is philosophical about those demands.

“I have been away from home since I was 16, even when I went around Macedonia, it is never like being at home. Home is home! It is difficult, I miss my family. The first real move, I went to Skopje which is about as hour away from home, from my city. So you train and you cannot go home every day, it is too far. So now, for almost six years I’m away from home. It is the way of football.”

Once he started to play regular first team football, Miovski’s progress was fast, so much so that he forced himself into the international reckoning for North Macedonia, a nation that looks as if it could become something of a European power in the years ahead.

“When I started to play well for a club, then I started to believe that I can reach the level to play for my country too. When they called me up for the first time, I was so excited. I was so nervous when I met the players and the coach. For two years before, I watched them, how they play and all these things. When I went there to train with them, and I saw them, it was great, you are soon like friends, you are teammate now, so my first day in training, it was an incredible moment for me.

“Then I made my debut, that was unbelievable, especially when I scored my first goal! We played at home, and I knew it would be my first start, my first time in the starting XI, and we won 4-0 against Gibraltar. I scored two goals, the first one and the third one. It was very special, especially because we were at home. It’s still unbelievable! My family were there, they support me and I think as a footballer, the best feeling you can have is when you score for the national team and your family is there.

“International football starts again very soon. We have a very hard group for the European Championship, we didn’t expect that it would be this hard. We have England, we have Italy, Ukraine, Malta. It will be very tough, especially because we won against Italy last time and basically, we knocked them out of the World Cup. We won the play-off 1-0, so now they know it is not easy to play against us, they will give us a lot of respect and they will want revenge. I think we play England in Old Trafford, not Wembley, but that is still exciting.

“We have a very good generation of players in the national team now, I think we are rated something like 45 or 50 in the world. We played in the European Championships for the first time when we tried to go to Euro 2020 and with just two million people, it is very difficult for us in qualification.

“But we were very close to the World Cup in Qatar, we were just one game away. Imagine, we beat Italy in the play-off and then had to play Portugal five days later in the final. That was very hard – you know sometimes you have to be lucky with this draw. It was very hard, but we have improved a lot and I think we will do something big in the future.”

Playing for the Dons certainly won’t hurt Bojan’s international ambitions. He seems very much at home here, on and off the pitch.

“I like Aberdeen very much. It’s not so big like Budapest – I was two years in Budapest. Here it is quiet, it’s green, it’s bliss, I like it like this. I’m here with my girlfriend, with my dog and we are very chilled!”

As the season has worn on, Bojan’s partnership with Duk up front has been a feature of Aberdeen’s play. Certainly Bojan enjoys being part of a front two.

“Duk is unbelievable, first as a person but also as a player. We help each other very much on the pitch. I think the hardest part of football is to score the goals. If you don’t score goals, you cannot be winning the games so I think we did well as a team until now and I hope that the two of us will continue like this. But this is true of all the players. When we play together like a team, we will always have success, so this is most important. I always say that if we play like a team it is difficult to beat us.

With 17 goals in the bag so far, just what does it actually feel like to score for Aberdeen?

“When you score a goal, the feeling is from the adrenaline, so it’s an unbelievable feeling and you always want to feel this in every game! You train and you work just for this and when you score, when you see everyone celebrate, especially at home with all the fans, you know that everyone is feeling this. I cannot explain this feeling, it doesn’t matter if you score from one yard or from outside the box, it’s the same.

“My favourite goal so far is in the semi-final of the League Cup at Hampden. The atmosphere on the day was unbelievable. The fans were brilliant. It was a great game and we were very unlucky that we lost in the end. It was very hard, a tough game. We played really good, but at the end, we conceded those two goals. But it gives you a taste for it, we want to get back there and hopefully we can do that next season.

“Before that, there is a lot to play for this season. The first thing we have to do is to get into the top six and stay there for when the league is split. Then we will see where we are and if we can achieve the top four. But why not? We have shown we can win games his season, now we need to start to do it again consistently.”