BackTHE WAY TO THE WORLD CUP FINALS
| The Bulgarian football players started packing their bags for the 1998 World Football Cup Finals even before the last match with their main rivals, the Russians; this, however, does not mean that they obtained their visa for France with no problem. On the contrary, they turned up winners with a generous share of good luck, in a group with no pretence to offer serious opposition at that (together with Russia, Israel, Cyprus and Luxembourg). Bulgaria lost 1:2 its first match in Tel-Aviv, and that beginning could have been the finale of her whole qualification cycle, if Israel and Cyprus did not both draw with Russia in their home matches. Thus, considering that Cyprus and Luxembourg were outsiders, the Bulgarians had to do nothing but to win their matches with Israel and Russia at home. While the first task was realistic, their winning 1:0 at home from the Russians, a traditionally hard adversary for the Bulgarians, was a victory well suffered. |
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The final match in Moscow, already a mere formality, was a 2:4 loss for the Bulgarians, while the playoffs in Italy cut the Russians' way to Paris.
Bulgaria achieved her best football success at the World Cup Finals in 1994 in U.S.A., when it finished fourth, overcoming such football legends as Argentine and Germany. Two years later Bulgaria had to leave the European final in the United Kingdom at the very beginning, having an all match with Spain, winning from Roumania and losing to France.This provided ground for the usual intrigues and scandals in the football circles. Their first effect was the removal of the national team trainer Dimitar Penev under whose instruction (1991-1996) the Bulgarian team achieved the biggest success ever in its history. His place was taken by Hristo Bonev, one of the most talented Bulgarian football players in the past. Will he be, though, the most suitable coach for our national set of players?
At this stage, however, hardly any expert would venture express his opinion in either direction. Now the only clear thing is that the condition of the Bulgarian national players gives no reason for optimism. Although the local journalists keep on glorifying them as "the fourth strongest in the world" (and this trumpeting is considered by most fans as obviously false), in their private talks they use entirely different terms. Among other things, only a few months following the euphoric multilingual praises of their play in the U.S.A., "the fourth strongest in the world" began to slip further and further down in the international classifications and for a long time now they have been out of the first twenty.
A considerable number of the problems have been created artificially by the collisions in the football circles, especially, among the top figures in the Bulgarian Football Association, that is why the poisonous atmosphere spreads down to the last fibre of this nationally most popular sport. Nevertheless, the management of the national team, headed by trainer Bonev, must not only find a middle course between the interests and pretences of high and mighty officials and sponsors, but to settle the conflicts in the team itself. For instance, football stars like Hristo Stoichkov and Yordan Lechkov boycotted some of the qualification matches for France '98. Recently, it seems that both the bureaucrats and the players have calmed down.
Some other difficulties that our national team has to face come from the ageing of the stars of the U.S. World Cup Finals '94 and the European Championship in the United Kingdom, who have been the most talented generation of players in the history of the Bulgarian football. It is well known that to rely chiefly on veterans is a double-edged weapon. On the one hand, sometimes the experience of such players brings generous fruit, on the other - as practice has evidenced more than once - postponing the generation change in football can play a bad joke to any trainer headquarters. The steps made so far by trainer Bonev do not make it very clear whether his choice of players has been the result of a well-considered strategy or a product induced by decisions taken under the pressure of the unhealthy and ever changing atmosphere in and around the Bulgarian football. It is also discouraging that now, as it has always been, Bulgaria does not have a strong home championship, and there is no rich enough choice for selection - not because there are no football talents, but because they are held back by home-grown criteria. At the same time, recently the nation has not that many leading "legionaries" abroad, and most of the football players, who brought success to Bulgaria in the recent past, belonged to this group of "foreigners".
Most obviously, only the matches of the Bulgarians in France will give answers to all the above questions. The safest thing for both the fans and the local football circles is to follow the proverb and not to count their chicken before they are hatched.
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