Look at the photograph from the Petar Milosevski stadium in Bitola. The green seats in the stands are tidy. The roof structure is new. And the pitch in front of them is the colour of hay.

That is what is left after two concerts - Zdravko Colic on 1 August and Steve Aoki on 2 August. The pitch was covered with boards for three days, in the fiercest part of summer, without normal watering. The result is visible from the stands: large dry patches where ten days ago there was the turf of a football stadium.

A million euros, then boards over the grass

The figure that makes this story hurt more isn't in the press releases. The stadium recently went through a serious reconstruction worth around a million euros. The north stand was renovated by 2023, work on the south finished in 2025, when the stadium passed a UEFA inspection. The playing surface was completely rebuilt in 2025 by the Football Federation - new drainage, a new irrigation system, an entirely new turf base.

So: the state and the federation invest years and a million euros in a pitch that meets international standards, and then that same pitch is covered with boards for three days in August so two concerts can go ahead.

A councillor with a camera, institutions with a statement

An institution did not break this story. A councillor did - Ivan Culakoski of the independent civic initiative "Poinaku" - who published photographs of the damaged surface. His comment on social media was blunt: "It was covered with boards for three days in the worst heat with no water. What were you thinking? You weren't thinking! You build one thing, you ruin three."

The response from the Bitola municipality and the public utility "Komunalec", which manages the stadium, arrived in the standard format. In cooperation with the Football Federation, "the very next day, after the concerts, we began repairing and restoring the grass surface". And the sentence you find in every second public-enterprise statement: "We assure the public that there is no cause for concern whatsoever."

The turf in the photograph does not look like something with no cause for concern.

The questions the statement doesn't touch

Komunalec claims all the sprinklers are working and that the restoration will be finished "in a very short time". Fine - but why weren't the sprinklers working during those three days when the pitch was under boards at over thirty degrees? That is a technical question with a very simple answer, and that is precisely why nobody asks it out loud.

The second question is about the contract. The concert organiser used a pitch in public ownership. Does the contract say who pays for the repair if the pitch is damaged - the organiser, or Komunalec out of public money? The statement says the measures were taken "in cooperation with the organiser", a formulation that can mean anything from full financial liability to a polite phone call.

Bitola wants big concerts and it is entitled to them. Cities live off events, and a stadium used only for football twenty times a year is a poor investment. But there is a difference between using a space and spending it. The difference is called planning - and it always costs less than the repair.