The Football League Destroyed By The Mafia

November 17th 1993 Under The Lights of the park depron it was the final 1994 workup qualifying game for France and Bulgaria with Sweden already qualified everything was at stake for the victors 1994 World Cup qualification was guaranteed for the losers nothing it was France who took a 1-nil lead after 31 minutes after balandor winning Mar star jeanpierre papan knocked the ball down to that Year's bendor bronze medalist Eric canar who fired a fair shot into the back of the net this was a star studded France team complemented by the likes of Des shamp Pati Desi

Blanc and janola four years later captained by Des shamp France didn't just qualify for the World Cup they won it Bulgaria had stars all of their own though future ballondor winner kristo stov foremost among them within 6 minutes EML kostov had the level and in the 90th minute kostadinov struck again blasting a thunderous shot past a helpless Bernard lmer in the France goal Bulgaria had qualified for the World Cup many times before but something about this team just felt different and so it proved a USA 94 Bulgaria beat Greece Argentina Mexico and Germany on route

to a first ever semifinal where only the individual Brilliance of a Roberto bajio brace could end their historic run these players borislav mahalov in goal yordan letchkov in Midfield Nasco sirakov up front the Talisman harist stov and the man who got them there EML kostadinov ought to be hailed as National Heroes the pride of Bulgaria and for at least the next 10 years they were now Bulgarian football finds itself in a very different place though Bulgaria's Top Flight has become a joke ranked four places below the cypriate first division by UAA coefficients with even most

bulgarians having lost interest in it primarily due to a belief and a valid one at that that games are rigged and none of it's real that asan's biggest clubs are owned and operated by Mafia bosses gangsters and other assorted Bandits who are routinely killed and the Bulgarian football Union is locked in a bitter competition with the government to see which festering swamp of corruption can become more hated by the Bulgarian people in fact that might just be the only contest in Bulgaria that isn't rigged they are both going health or leather in pursuit of that

Crown the end result is a national team ranked 81st in the world below cap verie am man and China which finished bottom of its group in Euro 2024 qualifying and didn't win a single game in 2023 despite playing against Montenegro Albania and Lithuania twice a reminder at this stage that this is a national team which finished fourth at the 19 1994 World Cup and was ranked eighth in the world in 1995 above Portugal France Argentina and the Netherlands the sadness for bulgarians is not only that football in their country has been ruined by a bunch

of duplicitous Crooks at Club International Youth and even amateur level but that some of the key figures from their golden team in the 1990s have been at the Forefront of their corruption played collapse I've made a lot of videos on this channel about corruption in football from Trinidad and Tobago to Tajikistan the latter of which I described as being the most corrupt football league in the world I would stand by that but Tajikistan is a totalitarian dictatorship sometimes liken to North Korea with very little football pedigree Bulgaria by contrast is supposed to be a democracy

a member of the European Union and a former power within International Football and yet the degree of criminality corruption and outright disdain for fans in Bulgarian football is as extraordinary as almost anything else that I've ever researched written about or reported on so sit back relax and join me on a journey to Bulgaria a nation of ancient history stunning Landscapes and beautiful black sea coastlines as we take a look at the ugliest side of Bulgarian culture and no I'm not referring to chalga but rather how organized crime has destroyed a once proud footballing Nation corruption

in Bulgaria is nothing new it was R in the People's Republic of Bulgaria under the Bulgarian Communist party and has only gotten worse since the collapse of State socialism Bulgaria modeled itself on the Soviet Union both in formation and in disillusion transformed from an agrarian peasant Society into an industrialized and urbanized socialist republic following World War II during the 1990s when the People's Republic of Bulgaria was dissolved Bulgaria attempted to democratize and integrate into the global capitalist system through shock therapy it wrought Devastation particularly in rural areas unemployment skyrocketed the agricultural sector was decimated and

huge numbers of people just left Bulgaria is believed to have experienced the fastest rate of depopulation of any country in Europe during the post Soviet era leaving behind a sense of Abandonment from which Bulgaria still hasn't recovered and as in the Soviet Union Bulgaria's businesses and industries were bought up by a small number of wealthy individuals who had either accumulated their wealth through crime were well connected with politicians or and it should be said in most instances both of the above football clubs were no exception previously administered by the state with the big clubs sometimes

tied and both operated and funded by a single state entity as in the case of cska Sophia with the army or local motive pive with the railways when Bulgaria's biggest football clubs were put on the free market they were hoovered up by the nation's new oligarchical Barons though the previous system was far from perfect with players having few freedoms especially when it came to leaving Bulgaria if they received an offer from abroad and persistent allegations of favoritism towards certain more powerful and better connected clubs it also had its advantages because clubs were funded by the

states or local Administration they tended to spend within their means and rarely collapsed as has become routine now among even Bulgaria's biggest claps furthermore since the state was in charge of everything and had an active interest not only in improving the standard of Bulgarian football to benefit the national team for domestic and international purposes but also to get kids into the sport both for their own health and to keep them out of trouble under the new system albeit not overnight everything changed it takes a lot of money to run a football club and the only

people in Bulgaria who had any money at the time were corrupt politicians Mafia bosses and corrupt politicians who were also Mafia bosses the state's motives in football might not have been entirely benevolent but they were a lot less Sinister than drug dealers cigarette Smugglers and pimps who have very little interest it would seem in preserving or raising the standard of Bulgarian football or nurturing the next generation of players and providing opportunities to youngsters it should be said not all of this was instant of course it was following the disolution of the People's Republic of Bulgaria

that the newly founded Republic of Bulgaria finished fourth at the 1994 World Cup this was supposed to be a Brave New World free from the fear and conflict of the Cold War era and though economic political and social chaos in shoot sport appeared to present a rare ray of light in reality however all of bulg AR's Immortal World Cup Heroes were a product of that previous now bygone era when Bulgaria joined the supposed free world as with most eastern block countries there was an exodus of their best footballers at the start of the 1990s Peta

HEV and yordan letchkov went to Hamburg Emil kostadinov joined Porto and Bulgaria's main man kisto stov was snapped up by Barcelona it was great for those players who were able to massively increase their earnings and play in Europe's top leagues for some of the continent's biggest clubs but it led to an inevitable decline in the standard of domestic football in Bulgaria again the impact wasn't immediate but rather it was more of a slow puncture throughout the 1990s and early 2000s cska sofhia reached the quarterfinals of the European Cup now the champions league for a sixth

time in 1990 the year before the People's Republic of Bulgaria was dissolved having twice reached the semi finals and no Bulgarian team has ever played a knockout game since the competition was revamped and rebranded as the UEFA Champions League there was one last harah for Bulgarian football in 2006 when lesy safia overcame s aside UD in the round of 16 to make it through to the quarterfinals of what was then the UEFA cup since renamed the Europa League but by this stage the rot had already set in as far as summer concerned that rot has

a name borislav mahalov who became president of the Bulgarian football Union in 2005 if maho's name rings a bell and you are neither Bulgarian nor over the age of 40 that's probably because I mentioned him in the introduction mahalov was Bulgaria's goalkeeper of the 1994 World Cup and throughout the country's Golden Era racking up some 102 caps for the lions that was an all-time record when mahoff finally hung up his gloves and it has only been exceeding by one player since namely stian Petro mahalov is nicknamed the wig in Bulgaria I will just let you

take a wild guess at why and upon his appointment it was hoped that he along with other legends from that 1994 team like yordan letchkov who became his vice president could breathe new life into Bulgarian football mahalov and his gang of Bandits have in fact had the precise opposite effect hideously corrupt and grossly incompetent mof's reign as bfu president has been bled by a series of scandals on his watch Bulgarian football has become among the least trusted in Europe in terms of match fixing and Corruption meanwhile the standard of football has become a joke it

would be wrong to blame all of Bulgaria's plate on Mah love and his acolytes but the timing speaks volumes the last major tournament Bulgaria qualified for allbe it they were knocked out in the group stage having lost all three games was Euro 20 0 4 mahalov was elected in 2005 replacing communist era Sports boss Ian slavkov having been vice president since 2001 although Bulgaria had already fallen a long way from their mid90s Peak by 2005 they were still ranked 37th in the world and had some exciting players to give them hope the Holy Trinity of

Martin Petro Stan Petrov and the Golden Boy Dimitar Berbatov all three of whom are going to star in the Premier League were all in their early to mid 20s meanwhile a teenage Valeri banov was making waves at leche and had gone to Euro 2004 as only an 18-year-old not only did Bulgaria fail to qualify for a single tournament with those players or since all three have retired but they haven't produced a single Top Class player equivalent to any of them in more than 20 years we have now reached a stage in which there isn't a

single Bulgarian player in any of Europe's top five leagues Bulgaria's most promising players no longer go to Germany or England but to Russia turkey or Greece meanwhile half of the national team squad play domestic football in Bulgaria that's a big problem for the national team because Bulgaria's Top Flight has been systemically dismantled and ravaged by crisis since the early 2000s the Bulgarian first league has become known as the football owner murder capital of the world no you heard that right the foot club owner murder capital of the world between 2003 and 2013 15 owners were

assassinated in the space of 10 years locomotive PIV who won their first and only league title in 2004 had three presidents killed in the space of just two years it became the case that football presidents in Bulgaria had about the same life expectancy as Japanese kamakazi pilots during World War II Bulgarian clubs and the BF like to present these deaths as tragedies and freak acts of Misfortune but in reality they were routine contract killings of the type that are not uncommon in organized crime it's important to give some context to the scale of corruption and

Mafia influence in Bulgarian life the richest person in Bulgaria or at least the richest until recently vasil boskov who is estimated to be worth more than a billion US is literally nicknamed the skull again again though more Sinister than the wig it's one of those nicknames that doesn't require much of an explanation in documents released by Wikileaks in 2009 boskov was described by the US state department as quote the most infamous gangster in Bulgaria active in money laundering privatization fraud threats extortion racketeering and various illegal trades bosov spent 3 years living in self Exile in

Dubai from 2020 following a fall out with Bulgaria's prime minister boo borisov if you're thinking that must make borisov one of the good guys well I've got some bad news for you in fact boskov returned to Bulgaria from Dubai because he wanted to give witness and testify against borisov who he claimed had been blackmailing him for several years as soon as he touched back down in sofhia boskov who is charged with contract killings extortion and hundreds of millions in unpaid taxes on his gambling businesses was arrested and taken in for questioning also accused of being

an associate a former Vagner group boss yevi progin who met an unfortunate end last August rip Bozo boskov has political Ambitions all of his own while in Exile boskov launched his own political party Bulgarian summer which brands itself and hey don't laugh as an anti-corruption party Bulgarian summer received about 2% of the vote in Bulgaria's 2021 parli elections unsurprisingly given his wealth interest in the gambling industry and the fact that he's a crook like all self-respecting organized crime bosses in Bulgaria boskov has been heavily involved in football in 1999 he bought cska sfia Bulgaria's biggest

and most successful Club winning two lead titles before selling to Indian businessman pramod Mel the brother of Steel magnate and billionaire lakmi Mel pramod once spent $82 million on his daughter's wedding but was declared bankrupt a few years ago in 2019 BOS covery visited his interest in Bulgarian football acquiring CSK safia's bitter Rivals lesy safia with whom they contest the socalled Eternal Derby Club allegiances seemingly aren't all that important to Bulgarian gangsters in boskov Soul full season owning leski in which he claimed to have invested more than 10 million in the club they finish fourth

the skull subsequently transferred his ownership of lki over to Nasco sirakov another tarnished Legend of Bulgaria's 1994 World Cup team who has since been accused of stealing shares as lki fans attempt to wrestle back control of their Club it probably won't surprise you all that much either at this stage to discover that Bulgaria's not so squeaky clean longtime prime minister Boco borisov has also been heavily involved or at least interested in football borisov is actually officially the oldest professional footballer in the history of the Bulgarian game having represented FC vosha in Bulgaria's second division in

2013 at the age of 54 just two years earlier while still in his 50s borisov curiously s off the competition of then Manchester United star deitar batov who won the Premier League Golden Boot and a premier league title that season as well as reaching a Champions League final to be named as Bulgaria's footballer of the year borisov later called for the award to be aned elected as a supposed man of the people in 2009 borisov's popularity soon began to wne so he decided to take matters into his own hands Bulgaria's 2013 2015 and 2019 parliamentary

elections were all overshadowed by allegations of fraud meanwhile borisov was personally accused of threatening and attacking journalists under borisov Bulgaria dropped to the foot of the European Union's press freedoms rankings which is incidentally also where they rank economically not everyone is struggling in Bulgaria though the likes of borisov are living very well I've told this anecdote before either in my video about CSK sopia or the one about ludig gret razgrad I can't quite remember but a Bulgarian friend of mine at school this will have been in 2012 or 2013 when asked what Bulgaria's prime minister

was like by our history teacher Sim simply replied he is Mafia I could of course go into great detail about all of borisov's ties to organized crime but that would be a long laborious and ultimately unnecessary exercise when those three words summ it up far more eloquently than I ever could also since he saw it last time and messaged me after 10 years if you happen to be watching this hi Stefan hope you're well borisov positioned himself as being in opposition to mahilo and the Bulgarian football Union but only through political cynicism as the bfu

had become so toxic and opposing them a cost-free exercise in 2018 working with mahalov Bulgaria bid to host Euro 2028 and the 2030 World Cup jointly with Greece Romania and Serbia or the alliance of laughably corrupt football federations as it was officially known no not really the bid collapsed when Greece secretly bidos the 2013 World Cup with Egypt and Saudi Arabia instead as the Saudis needed a European partner in a not very convincing attempt to circumvent FIFA regulations amusingly Saudi Arabia then went behind Greece's back doing a deal with FIFA to attract their bid to

jointly host the 2030 World Cup giving fifas Bizarro Portugal Spain Morocco Argentina Uruguay and Paraguay bid a clear run therefore allowing Saudi Arabia to host independently in 2013 34 and leaving Greece just like Serbia Romania and Bulgaria with absolutely nothing in the 2016 Bulgarian presidential elections borisov's preferred candidate seta Saka from his party gabb was defeated by independent candidat ran radev rev positioned himself as another anti-corruption candidate you may be starting to notice something of a theme here and as someone who is deeply corrupt borisov took great offense at that borisov and RAV subsequently became

bitter political Rivals and with much of borisov's political Goodwill having been eroded pressure on him began to mount that pressure culminated in Mass protests in 2020 and 2021 spanning for almost 300 days and resulting in an unprecedented political crisis borisov's 12-year prime minister ship came to an end in 2021 when his 4-year cabinet ended and Parliament accepted the resignation of third government despite having been questioned and detained for misuse of EU funds borisov has so far avoided any serious punishment and in Bulgaria's most recent 2023 parliamentary elections his two-party Coalition won 25% of the vote

which was more than any other Coalition because borisov has become so toxic however the other parties refused to form any Coalition with him at the head Bulgarian politics has basically been deadlocked since 20 21 then with Nikolai denov having become Prime Minister in 2023 after a coalition deal was finally struck throughout this time Bulgarian football has echoed a lot of the same problems as the nation at large often in even more comical fashion borislav mahoff has hung on to power for even longer and by even more nefarious means than borisov himself and the misuse of

funds was less of an accusation and more of a business model the Bulgarian football Union operates effectively with a one Member One vote system and the union has a total of more than 500 member clubs that means that a holy amateur unknown or Phantom Club as some bulgarians have begun to refer to them has the same voting Powers as cska or lesy safia mahalov managed for a very long time to retain the support of some big clubs most notably his own former Club lesy sfia who the bfu was routinely ACC accused of showing favoritism towards

on his watch but primarily it was these ever expanding Phantom clubs that allowed mov to keep winning elections although it should be said with varying degrees of ease mof was long surrounded by a Cadre of equally unscrupulous characters poisoning in effect the entire bfu mahalov then only needed to buy and I use that word very deliberately the support of over 50% of the bfu 58 member clubs who each have one vote in order to win elections conveniently former High love many of the administrators of these Phantom clubs would sell their firstborn child in exchange for

a packet of cigarettes so guaranteeing their votes often wasn't a particularly challenging task at this point it's worth noting that one or two of you especially if you're England fans may be watching this and thinking hang on a minute I'm sure the president of the Bulgarian football Union resigned in 2019 after a load of Bulgaria fans racially abused England's black players in Sophia and you would be right or at least so everyone thought basically although everyone in Bulgaria has known mahalov and the bfu to be corrupt and incompetent for a very long time it was

something which hadn't really attracted much International attention UEFA for example don't really care about the Integrity or Scruples of associations or their presidents so long as they are independent from government which the bfu was particularly after borisov publicly began to oppose them and the current UEFA president enjoys their support that was very firmly true in the case of mahalov given that he was elected to uefa's executive committee in 2011 and actually still sits on the committee now the way in which the bfu mishandled their racism scandal in 2019 though in a game that Bulgaria lost

4-0 against England Peaks the interest of a lot of the world's press uncomfortable questions started to be asked of the bfu and of mahalov so to take the heat off both of them mahalov officially resigned it was actually very successful in the sense that the stories died down as soon as mahalov stepped down as far as the hounds in the English press and Beyond were concerned they'd got their man this was a onewe story time to move on in Bulgaria meanwhile nothing actually changed mof's deputy and close Ally Al kasabov took the Reigns in his

absence as mahalov basically just went on an 18-month vacation in 2021 when another less tainted legend of the Bulgarian game Dimitar batov announced his intention to run in the Bulgarian football Union's upcoming presidential election mov rapidly emerged from the Shadows stating that his resignation was never formerly accepted and announcing that he would therefore be assuming the role once again Mah of a bitter presidential campaign against batov even kicking Village teams who supported berbatov's presidency out of the amateur leagues in order to deny them from voting 15 delegates were also unable to attend the vote due

to alleged paperwork issues all 15 of whom purely coincidentally I have no doubt were going to vote for Berbatov the end result was that mahalov won exactly 51% of the votes securing another 4-year term incidentally mahalov only won 241 votes rather than the 242 required for the 50% plus one vote minimum threshold meaning that a balloted runoff between him and Berbatov ought to have been triggered in order to determine the presidency no such election ever happened though so batov challenged the election in the courts and won ultimately however it wouldn't be Berbatov who would Dethrone

mahalov but the sheer weight of public dissatisfaction and hatred Bulgaria are in horrific form they didn't win a single game in 2023 or in Euro 2024 qualifying finishing bottom of their group and a 2-n defeat at home to Lithuania in October a nation of fewer than 3 million people where football isn't even the most popular sport felt like an all-time low if there's one lesson Bulgarian football fans have learned in recent years though it's that things can always get worse sure enough the following month there was a new low just days before Bulgaria was set

to host Hungary in a euro 2024 qualifier it was still unclear where the game would be played or whether it would go ahead at all the bfu claimed that the match couldn't be played in Sophia owing to security concerns issued by the police it later transpired that the police had only issued those concerns upon the bfu own request the bfu said that the game would be played in PIV instead but the mayor of pdiv denied that this was the case stating that PIV Stadium wasn't ready yet and heavy construction work was due over the relevant

International break the bfu then claimed that the game would instead be played in cardelli at an 11,000 sea Stadium over 3 hours away from sofhia and over 2 and a half hours from pev which was confirmed by the mayor of kadali this however wasn't even UFA compliant since UEFA rules state that all host venues must be within 90 minutes of an International Airport which Cali Stadium wasn't in the end the game was played in Sophia but behind closed doors owing to the so-called safety concerns that the bfu had cited as the reason for not playing

the game in Sophia to begin with the whole Fiasco saw anger at the bfu and at mahalov come to a head and over 4,000 fans made their way outside of the stadium regardless to stage of protest the protest soon turned violent as rubbish bins were seta Blaze and the police responded with water cannons and in the uing melee more than 20 fans and five police officers were injured with four fans admitted to hospital with serious injuries it was incidentally just one day of being the 28th anniversary of Bulgaria's famous 2-1 win in Paris that secured

the 1994 World Cup qualification the pressure on mov and the sheer level of anger at the bfu became so great following the protest tests that even ly Sophia publicly turned on him and that was probably the final nail in mof's coffin he has been replaced temporarily once again by his former deputy and Ally Mel kasabov with new election scheduled for March 2024 dimiter Berbatov has said that he plans to run again there are lots of countries with cruts football associations who still produce great players but what makes Bulgaria almost unique is how pmic the corruption

is at virtually every level of the game when State socialism collapsed in Bulgaria and was replaced by free markets the previous system of state-run sports and football schools was dismantled but nothing replaced it the remaining youth team infrastructure at clubs meanwhile has been neglected corrupted underfunded and left to rot Bulgaria isn't a wealthy country but even in the region compared to its peers it has just about the worst youth facilities and among the fewest qualified coaches and it shows in Bulgaria's current player pool Bulgaria's top teams and indeed most of the Bulgarian first League have

increasingly neglected nurturing their own talent in favor of importing foreign players over the last couple of decades believing it to be a cheaper and easier alternative ludig rrad who have won the last 12 Bulgarian first League titles on the bounce only have five Bulgarian players in their entire 25 man squad they have four players from Brazil alone and it has been more in the past players from Africa and South America view Bulgaria as an attractive stop gap on route to Europe's most prestigious leagues due to the ease of getting visas and ultimately citizenship allowing them

to join clubs in England Germany France or Italy more easily without any issues relating to their paperwork it is a controversial Topic in Bulgaria unsurprisingly given the fact that it has coincided with the ating of Youth team football in Bulgaria which has become riddle with nepotism besides other things both nepotism and crumbling infrastructure and facilities are issues that aren't unique to the youth Team game though PIV Stadium the largest football stadium in Bulgaria with a capacity of 55,000 is in a dire state with no UFA license and not even functioning flood lights it has been

reduced to hosting Junior games and third division fixtures which are lucky to attracts a 100 or so fans it may be the most extreme example but it's far from an isolated incident as for weapons grade nepotism well borislav mahalo's father was also a lesy Sophia Legend who represented Bulgaria namely Bea mahalov as is his own son Nikolai mahalov who captains lki now and represented Bulgaria 46 times while his father was bfu President between 2006 and 2022 it has long been suspected particularly when Nikolai was winning caps Bulgaria despite not even playing at Club level that

perhaps those two things might have been related the crumbling state of Bulgarian football stadiums and shocking decline in standards have contributed to a steep decline in attendances though not as much as the fundamental mistrust among supporters that what they are witnessing is even real the degree of corruption and match fixing in the Bulgarian game for an awfully long time now has been faral this isn't even denied by Bulgaria's own clubs and several officials 5 years ago and if you don't laugh at this then you'll cry prime minister Boo borisov and the owners of Bulgaria's biggest

clubs held a meeting after which controversial cska sopia majority shareholder gisha ganev released a statement which read quote we agreed hopefully it will be the last time and there will be fair play we agreed not to buy matches not to buy referees Not To Break teams and so on Let There be full fair play and let the best win end quote no no really you did hear me right there the owners of Bulgaria's biggest clubs and the Prime Minister genuinely released a statement announcing that there would be no more fixed gains or bought referees Romania's

biggest clubs actually had a similar meeting and Revelation a few years earlier which lasted for all of One season bulgaras last did for about 5 minutes in fact I don't think the door had shut for the meeting and one of them had already revealed that they'd had their fingers crossed behind their backs the collaps of Bulgaria's biggest clubs not helped by their dodgy owners routinely being killed and their usurping by Village clubs with virtually no fans but wealthy benefactors has further undermined what was once a serious League the F4 mentioned CSK Sophia shareholder Gia ganev

was for a long time the owner of rival Club PFC litex LC ganev bought litex who are based in a city of fewer than 30,000 people in 1996 and immediately began investing heavily in the club in his first season litex won promotion and in his second they won their first ever Bulgarian first league title usurping leski and CSK sfia three more titles would follow in 1999 2010 and 2011 along with four Bulgarian cups LX even twice made it through to The Knockout stages of the UEFA Cup in 2016 however when cska sa were threatened with

expulsion from the league and relegation to the third tier owing to their financial woes Ganser found an elegant solution he would rename litex loc as cska safia and simply continue playing in the Top Flight as cska unsurprisingly this wasn't a particularly smooth transition some angered CSK fans founded a new club FC cska 1948 sofhia claiming to be the real cska and initially at least putting a focus on homegrown players there are now as I covered in an entire video should any of you be interested in this two clubs who claim to be the real cska

Sophia and they finished second and third in the Bulgarian first League last season at the same time as all of this was happening csk's Rivals lesy sfia were all in an economic crisis it was at this point that former cska owner and Bulgaria's wealthiest individual that's right the skull himself vasil boskov bought the club later claiming to have done so only because he was threatened by prime minister boo borisov CSK and leski sfia are the two most notable examples as Bulgaria's two biggest clubs but every one of Bulgaria's more traditionally established teams has been hit

with some kind of Scandal or catastro ropy since the turn of the Millennium two time Bulgarian first League champions botev plev imploded under the ownership of diar ristov during the 2000s and were administratively relegated from the first to the third tier in 2010 three time Champions locomotive Sophia suffered a similar fate when they were relegated to the third tier in 2015 due to unpaid debts just a year after finishing third in the top flight and competing in the UEFA cup but their prob problems went from bad to worse when they were denied even of a

third TI license and were liquidated meaning that they had to be refounded and start out in the fourth Division and four time Bulgarian Champions litex LC were taken over by grea gev's son after his father fled for cska and they were administratively relegated also to the third tier in 2017 and are still only in the second league now in the meantime ludig razgrad who I have also made an entire video about thanks solely to the extraordinary funding of owner kol doev have become the dominant force in Bulgarian football and when I say the dominant Force

he bought them in 2010 they won promotion in his first season they then won the Bulgarian first league title in their first ever Top Flight campaign and they have won it every single season since that is 12 years in a row despite that success and knowing to the fact that ludig garettes have had little football tradition before that and razgrad has a population of fewer than 30,000 people ludig gretes are still just about the worst supported team in the division averaging about 1,000 fans at their home games as crowds in Bulgaria have dwindled with football

fans often paying more attention to foreign leagues in which they at least felt that they could trust the Integrity of games and results unlike at home the makeup of crowds has also significantly changed which set of fans is less moved by the actual football well Hooligans racists and thugs of course some interesting tattoos there I'm sure you'd agree further tarnishing the reputation of Bulgarian football as the world saw against England in 2019 though that was far from an isolated incident it's also worth noting that violence and racism are far from being The Preserve of fans

on The Terraces Bulgarian football club Owners as we know by now are a kill or be killed business owing to their ties to organized crime meanwhile the bfu has routinely displayed fairly explicit racism Georgie ianov another now hated former Bulgarian International who won 34 caps between 1996 and 2004 is now the technical director of the Bulgarian national team almost exactly a year ago he stated that so long as he was in charge no non-white player would ever represent Bulgaria now that might seem a bit racist you know what with it being massively racist and all

but also while he is in charge Bulgaria aren't going to win any games therefore showing respect and Goodwill to all people from all nationalities well except for bulgarians I suppose when you factor in Bulgaria's worrying demographic pyramid there were around 150,000 Birds a year in Bulgaria when sto Ken Co were born compared to just 70,000 when the current crop were born in the 1990s and 2000s and deteriorating Health among young people and skyrocketing obesity levels and it is hardly surprising that Bulgaria hasn't produced any footballers of real quality in an awfully long time the extreme

degradation of the Bulgarian game and the endemic corruption and match fixing hasn't just undermined the trust of bulgarians in domestic football but also foreigners who don't know what to believe when they Scout Bulgarian players now becoming increasing Alliance on performances at junior level with the national team and therefore diminishing the standard of club that tends to come in for them it is a bleak picture there's not really any other way of putting it and it didn't have to be like this it is possible even with gangsterism and massive corruption running rif to still retain some

core competencies in fact it's often more profitable that way FIFA and UEFA are incredibly Insidious and corrupt organizations but they are also incredibly competent in terms of marketing negotiating R deals and constantly increasing their revenue the popularity of their competitions therefore continues to increase and revenues continue to rise meaning that there is more money to go around for everyone Dam Zagreb likewise is a great example of how a football club can be hideously corrupt off the pitch under the ownership of a common criminal and still run an outstanding Academy that churns out constant talent to

the benefit of the nefarious characters at the top of the organization ation Bulgarian football has had a lethal combination of all consuming corruption and almost unimaginable incompetence which together have conspired to take the team that finished fourth in the world in 1994 to losing at home to Lithuania being ranked below football powerhouses like usbekistan and Aman and not even being able to host games the great irony of course being that many of the same people who were responsible for those successes in the 1990s have also been responsible for Bulgaria's catastrophic demise it seems likely that

Dimitar batov will finally become Be Few presidents in March and the hope there has to be that he made too much money during his playing days to be as corrupt as mahilo and won't become just yet another tarnish Legend ultimately though it will take much more than a change of President Bulgarian football requires a total clear out it's hard to imagine anyone in any administrative position position at the bfu who hasn't been corrupted over the last 18 years and it almost feels like abolishing the organization alog together and refounding it with an entirely new set

of Staff would be the only effective solution Bulgarian football alone cannot alter the political reality within which it exists that much is obvious but it can get its own house in order it can vet owners to prevent the game from being overrun by organized crime it can clamp down in a meaningful Sense on on Match fixing to bring some trust and integrity back to the Bulgarian game and it can start to take seriously Youth Development as anyone who actually cared about Bulgarian football naturally would whether it will do any of those things recent history doesn't

Inspire much confidence that is it for today's video but thank you all very much as ever for watching bit of a bleak one especially if you're Bulgarian but an important subject nonetheless and one that I have been asked to cover for a very very long time so yeah hope you enjoyed it hit the like button if that was the case let me know your thoughts Down Below in the comments and of course make sure that you're subscribed and have notifications turned on for both this Channel hitc 7s and also my backup Channel or second Channel

Alfie pots armor both of which should be about to appear on your screens now along with that ludig gret's video that I mentioned earlier on and the one about the corruption in Tajikistan um as I said there's also the video about CSK Sophia but I can only fit two on the screen so you know you can just watch that one afterwards uh you can also find me on Twitter Instagram or threads via the username @ hit tz7s on all three should you wish to do so and all of those links plus a whole lot more

cuz I've just Bamboozled you with quite a lot there should be down in the video description below cheers