Unfinished stadium in Bulgaria
“Life-threatening”: European Championship qualifier before cancellation and 0:3 score
November 13, 2023, 8:53 p.m
The president of Bulgaria’s football association fears that he will be excluded from all international competitions for several years. Because: The home game in the European Championship qualifiers against Hungary is in great danger. The stadium in Plovdiv is still a construction site and the police are refusing to move it to the capital Sofia.
The Bulgarian national football team’s European Championship qualifier against Hungary scheduled for this Thursday is about to be canceled. The city of Plovdiv cannot release the stadium, which is currently under renovation, for the game in Group G, Mayor Kostadin Dimitrov told Bulgarian media. “It cannot take place because otherwise there would be a risk to human life,” he explained.
Canceling the qualifying match would mean it would be counted as a 3-0 win for Hungary. This means the Hungarians would have secured their ticket to the 2024 European Football Championship in Germany. Hungary leads the group with 14 points from six games and is six points ahead of third-placed Montenegro heading into the final two matchdays. Just one point in Bulgaria (or at the end this Sunday against Montenegro) is enough to take one of the first two places in the group that entitles you to take part in the European Championship.
Borislav Mikhailov, the president of the Bulgarian Football Association (BFS), described the impending cancellation on Bulgarian public television BNT as an “absolute catastrophe”. The European football union UEFA could exclude Bulgaria from all international competitions for many years, Mikhailov said.
A relocation of the game to the capital Sofia had already been ruled out earlier. The police were unable to protect the venue against violent Bulgarian hooligans. Mikhailov therefore appealed to those responsible to do something so that the game could take place.
In terms of sport, the game is of little importance for Bulgaria; coach Ilian Iliev’s team is still winless in the European Championship qualification and is last with only two points. Long gone are the glory days of Bulgarian football, which culminated in reaching the semi-finals of the 1994 World Cup – thanks to a 2-1 win over the DFB team in the quarter-finals. Bulgaria last qualified for a major tournament in 2004, but failed at the European Championships in Portugal after three defeats as bottom of the group.