NumberHunter1

Very recently, ex-Aston Villa player and overall seemingly pretty awesome guy Stiliyan Petrov did an hour-long interview with Tribuna Levski, the main YouTube fan channel of Levski Sofia. Petrov was there as a representative of Dimitar Berbatov's group, which aims to replace the extremely poor current administration of the Bulgarian Football Union (BFS). The interview mostly contained a lot of extremely valid criticisms toward the BFS. There were quite a few reasonable questions raised, and slightly concerningly, to me at least, there were very few specific answers regarding how this hypothetical new administration of the BFS would revitalize Bulgarian football. Some of the few satisfying answers were that the hypothetical new BFS would take special care to make sure football clubs are fully aware of all the already existing opportunities for state financing and a term limit to avoid repeating the current case of an extremely rotten administration making sure that they are in power indefinitely. 

A, to me very worrisome idea was the one that was discussed the most, as well as the one that received the most media coverage. The "luxury tax". Disclaimer: Although I disagree with the idea of the tax being a good idea, I still support a change in the management of the BFS. Currently, the most important thing for us to be able to make any progress is to remove Bobby Mihailov and his gang of drunks from power. If that requires placing Berbatov in charge, I am all for it.

The problem: Bulgarian football players are at a very low level compared to the rest of the world in relation to where they were a few decades ago and in relation to how good we should expect them to be. We have no players playing in any of Europe's top 5 leagues, which is considerably worse than even 10 years ago, when we had players like Berbatov, Petrov and Bozhinov among others. The national team is in a constant state of decline, despite many coaches saying that "we did poorly, but we are on the up" after every failed qualification.

The alleged causes:

- Poor academies - In Bulgaria, many teams have academies pretty much out of necessity due to regulation. The only objective of many is not to export good-quality young players but rather to be self-sustaining through the costs parents pay. The coaches are corrupt, there is no discipline, and academies have too many teams of the same age group for maximum profit. Parents often bribe coaches for their children to get playing minutes in place of potentially more driven and talented ones. Personally, I entirely agree with this.

- Professional teams using too many foreigners: Petrov alleges that Bulgarian talents are unable to grow in many local teams due to said teams often buying up too many foreigners. No examples were directly given, but some of the main culprits here include the top 2 teams from the last few years, Ludogorets and CSKA - Sofia. Both typically field between 1 and 2 Bulgarians per game, instead opting for more proven players from all over the rest of the world. Culprits also include midtable Beroe, who often play with no Bulgarians in their starting 11. All this is obviously a problem, but I would later argue that it is not necessarily the cause of our not having that many exceptional players, more so as a consequence of the academy issue.

Luxury tax:

This is where this so-called "Luxury tax" comes in. It is to be used as a way to mitigate the issue of playing too few Bulgarians in our league. In practice, this is a tax that will be applied to every foreign player over an unspecified number of foreign players. The money received from this tax will be spread across "teams that facilitate the development of young Bulgarian talent". Sounds great, right? We can force Ludogorets CSKA-Sofia and Beroe to play with more Bulgarians to develop great footballers for our national team while also financing smaller, poorer clubs with a large focus on young talent like Pirin Blagoevgrad. Well, let me tell you why I, a recent computer science graduate with no experience managing Bulgarian football, think this is a terrible idea.

The best players in the league are foreigners:

• Best player in Ludogorets-Tekpetey - not Bulgarian
• Best player in CSKA-Sofia-Heintz - not Bulgarian
• Best player in Cherno More-Popov - Bulgarian
• Best player in Loko Plovdiv-Giovanny not Bulgarian
• Best player in Levski - Welton - not Bulgarian
• Best player in Arda - Not sure, but he's probably Bulgarian

These are all top teams, and the crown jewel of most of them is some extremely motivated foreigner who was bought in for relatively cheap, gets paid relatively cheap (ok, the Ludogorets and CSKA-Sofia ones likely get paid very well), and ended up becoming the best player over time with the help of their academy background.

The Luxury Tax would increase the price clubs would have to pay for ALL foreigners, not just those over the threshold.

The explanation for this is pretty simple. If the limit for free foreigners is 6 and you get a seventh one, it's not just the seventh foreigner that is contributing toward what you have to pay. It's all of your players. After all, if you get rid of one of the others, you don't have to pay the tax for the seventh anymore. This means that the desirability of all foreigners is reduced. That way, we're eliminating some of the potential best players in the league, further reducing the strength of Bulgarian clubs. Of course, the idea is to compensate by developing more high-potential Bulgarians, but unfortunately, before we fix the major academy problem, such talent, which has not already been ruined, is not widely available.

Demand for Bulgarian players will increase, causing their prices to artificially rise, pricing out non-top clubs:

If suddenly Ludogorets and CSKA-Sofia suddenly start needing to have at least 7 Bulgarians in their starting squads, this means that, to stay competitive, let alone remain the best two teams, they would need to find good Bulgarian players. With the current academy system (so also not within the next 5 years, even if we magically fix all academy problems instantly), this will mainly not be academy players, but rather somewhat proven players poached from other clubs. As there will be so much new demand, teams will have to increase Bulgarian players' salaries. Since no one can offer salaries as high as Ludogorets and CSKA-Sofia, a lot of native players will inevitably get poached Bayern Munich style. Ludogorets is already doing that with the current situation, and the Luxury Tax could only make it worse. 

The weaker teams get weaker:

With the sudden reduction of available quality Bulgarian players and with their price rise, less financially powerful clubs will become unable to hold on to them or buy them. Luring in more foreigners is not an option because of the tax. As such, these teams will have to rely on weaker academy players, and while yes, this is, in theory, good for our football, it would also make weaker teams weaker and reduce league competitiveness significantly. And yes, the proceeds of the Luxury tax are supposed to go to these sorts of teams with more academy players. Hypothetically, this could allow for the academies to eventually become better, thus making the teams better. Said academy players would still get sponged up by the big clubs, though.

The narrative that currently "young Bulgarians are not given a chance". 

This is a very common talking point for both the drunks that comprise the current BFS, as well as  national team coaches of many age groups and Berbatov's group. It's at the core of the idea of a "Luxury tax". In my humble opinion, this idea, aside from the two teams at the very top of the table, is absolute bullcrap. Except for the top two teams and a few others, every Bulgarian team has a very decent amount of young or even second-team Bulgarian players waiting for a chance. During a season of Bulgarian football, there are a ton of teams with low squad depth and rotations. As a result, a lot of young players who train with the good, experienced players end up playing by necessity.

To give an extremely recent example, two days ago, Levski (4th last year) just played a 17-year-old for 90 minutes and subbed in two more 17-year-olds. Said tactical maneuver was almost unavoidable, as there was literally no one else who could play. One of the issues was that two of our starters (18 and 21) played for the U21 national team a day prior. Did I mention that our keeper, who starts every game, is 18 years old? We are missing a lot of players because of poor management and financial issues, and we can't NOT give young players a shot. We are also extremely trusting of young talent if they manage to show quality. Our then 17 year old keeper was the captain for quite a bit. All the kids mentioned are Bulgarian, by the way.

A lot of teams happen to similarly give chances to their youth. Arda, Cherno More, Etar, Pirin, Botev Vratsa, Hebar are some examples. It's just that we can't really give you infinite chances if you're not motivated enough or you suck. Heck, some of our young Bulgarian players have had horrendous performances, and we've still stuck with them because the manager and the fans trust them. We want them to succeed.

If I were on Berabtov's team, I would urge them to reconsider where the real issue with young Bulgarian football is, namely the academies. Of course, they already know that, but personally, I would like them to focus on that before making any efforts for sweeping changed to our league's rules. I firmly believe that with a good and functioning academy system as well as good training grounds, the issue causing the discussion around the Luxury Tax will disappear.

TLDR: The aspiring new head of the Bulgarian FA wants to include a tax for teams using more than a predetermined number of Bulgarians. I think this idea is bad because it will make the league even less competitive and raise prices of Bulgarian players.

Link to the Stiliyan Petrov interview (in Bulgarian):

https://www.youtube.com/live/mUkh9EOO3nA?si=1ydq3SzBHmGhF5Cj

The Bulgarian cup round of 32 match between Levaki Sofia and second division Dunav Ruse will take place later today. Predictably, this means that a lot of the Levski squad have been busy with their international fixtures. In addition to that, some injuries and a suspension further complicate issues. To further illustrate how bad the situation is, I will list out every Levski player by position, excluding most second team players, indicating the extent of their availability, or other problems:

Goalkeepers:

1 Plamen Andreev - Was on the bench for the U21 national teama yesterday. Will be swiftly transported to Ruse for the match

13 Niki Mihaylov - Ill and unable to play

99 Ivan Andonov - Has only ever played for the second team

Centre backs:

33 Jose Cordoba - played for Panama yesterday

5 Kellian Van der Kaap - available

50 Kristian Dimitrov - Injured in NT training

Left backs:

6 Tsunami - Injured (and yes, we somehow only basically have 1 left back)

Right backs:

2 Jeremy Petris - Yellow Card Suspension

22 Patrik-Gabriel Galchev - Available (but usually a sub)

Defensive Midfield:

8 Andrian Kraev (C) - Played 77 minutes in the men's national team 3 days ago - available

37 Darlan - Available

20 Asen Chandarov - Available (usually a sub)

Attacking Midfield:

14 Iliyan Stefanov - Available (usually a sub)

10 Asen Mitkov - Played 72 minutes for Bulgaria U21 yesterday

97 Hasimi Fadiga - Available

Left Wingers

17 Welton - Injured

11 Jawad El Jemili - Injured

Right Wingers

7 Ronaldo - Available

88 Marin Petkov - played 72 minutes for Bulgaria U21 yesterday

Strikers

9 Ricardinho - Available

16 Preslav Bachev - Played for Bulgaria U19 yesterday

19 Bilal Bari - Injured long-term

As you can clearly see, things are not going well. So much so that in order to fill a starting 11, we will have to either play someone who has played >70 minutes on the other side of the country yesterday, use someone from our third division second team, or (please no) rush back someone injured. And you know what? This is all our fault.

As had been already established, the Bulgarian Football Union (BFS) is an awful, incompetent bunch of drunks. Just this year, they scheduled CSKA - Sofia - Levski - The game proceeded by marches toward the national stadium from both sides of Sofia - on the same day as the Sofia marathon, having to multiple days later reschedule, because it was infeasible. Poor scheduling is nothing new for the BFS. But here is the thing, Levski could have done something about this. The game could have been rescheduled, in fact multiple other teams rescheduled theirs. But the one team with the most Bulgarian national team players did not, despite the national team fixtures yesterday being public knowledge. This ignorance is absulutely moronic and suicidal. A clear indication that the club's management does not make an effort to see more than say, a week into the future.

As a fun game, I will now make an effort to guess our starting 11 tomorrow:

4-3-3

Goalkeeper - Andonov - first team debut

Left back - Galchev (usually RB)

Right back - Ronaldo (usually RW)

Centre back - Van der Kaap

Centre Back - Kraev (usually CDM)

Defensive Midfield - Chandarov

Defensive Midfield - Darlan

Attacking Midfield - Stefanov

Left Wing - El Jemili (carrying a slight injury)

Right Wing - Fadiga (usually AM)

Striker - Ricardinho

Subs - No one???????

Jokes aside it's not entirely infeasible we use the U21 players who played yesterday as subs, and we also have access to a few kids from the second team who have never played for the first team.

I hope the few of you who got to the end of this post enjoyed this little dive into this wacky, wacky game that will be played 5 hours from now. And also tell me, has your team ever been in a similar situation before?

Google translation:

Bulgaria welcomes Hungary in a qualifier for next year's European Championship. The match, preceded by numerous scandals, started at 19:00.

Before and during it, at 5:00 p.m., an organized fan protest against the BFS management began around the "Vasil Levski" National Stadium.

After 18:30 the tension escalated. After bombs were thrown and rockets fired at the police, a water cannon was turned on. There were also clashes between the supporters and the law enforcement agencies

14:49 The police presence in the center of Sofia has been increased since lunchtime. Yesterday, the SDVR announced that 1,800 policemen will take care of maintaining order.

17:39 The organizers of the protest: the police blocked fans at the entrance to Sofia

17:49 Cherno More fan: They stopped us at the entrance to Sofia, they held us for an hour and a half

18:13 They hung a road sign with an anti-Borislav Mihailov poster

18:22 Escalation of tension! Fans of Levski and CSKA gathered, rockets flew, a water cannon was launched

19:02 Despite the excesses, the match between Bulgaria and Hungary started according to plan. In the VIP box were the vice-presidents of BFS Yordan Lechkov and Emil Kostadinov, the technical director Georgi Ivanov-Gonzo and the head of BPFL Atanas Karaivanov.

Translation of the most relevant segment of the announcement, using Google Translate:

"After the unprecedented decision of the municipality of Plovdiv to violate the preliminary agreement for the use of the Hristo Botev stadium and to refuse the Bulgarian national team to hold its next match of the European qualifiers at the facility, and subsequent communication between all interested parties, including . state authorities, today UEFA ordered that the match between Bulgaria and Hungary be played at the Vasil Levski National Stadium in Sofia on 16.11.2023 at 7:00 p.m. behind closed doors"

For more information regarding the situation and what led up to it out, you can check out this post from yesterday, which I try to update with the latest information:

https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/s/vmMEjYxQs3

This Thursday, Bulgaria is supposed to host the Euro 2024 qualification game against Hungary. A vital one for Hungary, as they have still not solidified their spot in the euros, and a first test for new Bulgarian coach Ilian Iliev. It was originally supposed to take place in Sofia, however it is as of now entirely uncertain where the match will take place, or whether it will take place at all. Entirely at fault here is the Bulgarian football union (BFS) in their reaction to a situation, developed mosty over the past month (though a result of horrible mismanagement over the past 18 years). In this post, I will do my best to summarize what happened leading up to this scandal.

14th Oct 2023:

Bulgaria - Lithuania is plyed in Sofia. After a 1-1 draw in the away fixture, Bulgaria are heavy favorites at home. After Levski captain Adrian Kraev is sent off at the end of the first half, Lithuania defeats Bulgaria 0-2. This sparks outrage in the stadium and online, as this is seen by pretty much everyone, myself included, as possibly the lowest low Bulgarian football has reached (yet!). After some quite frankly embarassing interviews by the (now ex) head coach, and (current) technical director Georgi Ivanov (Levski legend), stating that things are more or less fine, discussions of the BFS's incompetence and corruption gained a lot of traction.

18th Oct 2023:

As he sees a golden opportunity, current frontrunner for new head of the BFS, (firmly against the current administration) Dimitar Berbatov (Manchester United legend) arranges an interview discussionwith Darik - a very popular Bulgarian national radio and media site. As a direct response, BFS vice president Yordan Lechkov also organizes the same, immediately after Berbatov's one. He insists on a live debate with Berbatov, but Berbatov declines. Berbatov's interview is the generic (and in this case very reasonable) "the BFS is an awful and corrupt organization and we need to uproot it". More interestingly, in Lechkov's interview, he deflects all blame on behalf of the BFS, instead opting to blame everyone else, from the state, to Bulgarian football clubs for playing foreigners over Bulgarians, to the NT players, even specifically pointing to Andrian Kraev as the reason for the loss to Lithuania. He also uttered a now very infamous phrase, roughly translating to

"Who wants us to resign?".

The question speead like wildfire throughout wildfire throughout media sites and social media.

19th Oct 2023:

Retired footballer Boyko Velichkov came out with a post on social media, suggesting that fans in every club stadium chant "resignation" at minute 18. Minute 18 is decided on, as that is how many years the BFS has been in power for.

Later in October:

Velichkov's idea is implementing, as nearly every first dicision game in Bulgaria has the chants in the 18th minute. From more populated stadiums like those of Botev Plovdiv, CAKA-Sofia and especially Levski, to the less visited ones like those in Vratsa and Pazarzhik.

An organization starts to take shape, where fans of every big club are to come together for Bulgaria - Hungary (said to take place in Sofia), sit in a specific, organized fashion to prevent violence between supporters of different teams, and explicitly tell the BFS and UEFA exactly what they think about the horrendous massacre of Bulgarian football at the hands of the BFS. The protest is specifically intended to be a peaceful one.

6th Nov 2023

The BFS announces that, due to a recommendation by UEFA, the game will be moved from the national stadium in Sofia to Hristo Botev stadium in Plovdiv and that THERE WILL BE NO HOME FANS ALLOWED. The UEFA recommendation was later confirmed to be based on an undisclosed report of the BFS with safety concerns raised. Clearly, BFS president Boby Mihailov used his very much existing power within UEFA to cause the move. Fans are very obviously outraged, but I will stop mentioning that as it is assumed from this point on.

10th Nov 2023:

The mayor of Plovdiv says that the match cannot be played in Plovdiv. Main reason for which being that the stadium is not fully built, with heavy construction being planned for the international break, as Botev Plovdiv do not play there for 3 weeks.

11th Nov 2023:

The owner of the construction firm that builds the stadium, Iliyan Filipov is interviewed by Darik, where he states that multiple people from BFS have demanded that he send a letter, claiming thag the stadium is safe to use, threatening him that failure to comply, could make it so that the BFS revokes the licences of both Plovdiv clubs. The BFS denies the allegations and "leaks" a taped phone call between their representative and Filipov, where a letter is requested, and where a revocation of the stadium's license is heavily implied.

13th Nov 2023 (today):

The municipality of Plovdiv officially comes out with a statement that the match can and will not be played in Plovdiv, due to the ingoing construction work. There is growing speculatiom, as to whether or not the game can be played at all. Boby Mihailov states that if Bulgaria ends up unable to host the game, we could get banned from all European competitions. Meanwhile, no word on moving it back to Sofia.

Darik reports on rumors of the game being moved to Karzhali (3+ hour drive from Sofia, where the Hungarian NT will land). Darik interviews the Mayor of Pazardzhik, who says that "it is 99% certain", among a bunch of obvious lies peddled to him by the BFS (the man is clearly not very knowledgable on the matter). Hungarians, who follow the situation are very unhappy about what their team would need to be put through.

As of yet, nothing is official, and the situation is developing very quickly. Even if Pazardhik is decided on to host the match, UEFA still needs to approve the decision. I will make sure to update this post with the latest unformation for those interested.

Sources: Dsport.bg and my own personal speculation, which I have attempted to make obvious when present.

If you've managed to get to the end of this post, thank you very much for the interest in the situation and our general crisis. Sadly, I do not anticipate this post getting much traction.

In the first round of the Bulgarian cup that has first division teams play, Cherno More (who have had an absolutely killer season thus far in the league) have been defeated 1-0 by Litex, who are currently 14th and near the relagation zone in the second division.

It is worth noting that this Litex is a different team to what used to be called Litex Lovech. In 2016, the old Litex renamed itself to CSKA-Sofia and moved to Sofia. The current Litex is a team named Botev Lukovit renamed to Litex.

Getting back to the upset, this is pretty huge for Litex and extremely unexpected. Last year, Cherno More were one of the leading Cup contenders, losing out to Ludogorets on penalties on the second leg of the semi-finals.