Second Division. One league of 22 teams. It was still too large league, but it was reduced by 14 teams. The season was tough for few former first-division members, notably Marek (Stanke Dimitrov), Rozova dolina (Kazanlik), Yantra (Gabrovo), and Belasitza (Petrich). The decline of Yantra was going on for years, now hitting the bottom. The problems of the other three were similar – their cities were small. Once out of the top league, neither club had chances for strong recruits. Just the opposite – players left them. Marek had fantastic years with very small team, which aged without any additional players of worth.
Rozova dolina (on the right, before starting home match against Lokomotiv Plovdiv in white) eventually recovered in the spring half of the season and finished 10th at the end, but the other three were relegated. Plus tiny Sportist (General Toshevo). Marek started the season with its traditional name – Marek – but the final table gives different name: Dupnitza. Yes, they have been renamed after the end of the season, when the Party decreed its weird will. It may be confusing but… the original name of the city is Dupnitza and that is the name today as well. But the Communist renamed it Stanke Dimitrov, after one of their heroes, a Soviet terrorist,which was killed once upon a time. His conspiratorial name was Marek – given to the club. But now clubs cannot use names of historic persons, so it was renamed, perhaps with some defiance of authority, to the old name of the city. The upfront was eventually spotted and the club was renamed again – this time to the mountain, surrounding the town – Rila. Fast forward to the present: today the city is again Dupnitza and the club – Marek. Mind boggling? Should be – this is Communism after all. Cannot have a club named after historic person – unless this person is Spartacus. All clubs with name Spartak were not renamed. So, there was Spartak (Plovdiv), freshly reincarnated, in the Second Divison – they finished 6th.
Because of the big scandal at the Cup final, a lot of other things were hardly mentioned and remain a mystery: most second division teams were tightly packed – 6 points divide Dupnitza (or Marek), 19th and relegated, and 5th-placed Svetkavitza (Targovishte), but for whatever unmentioned and plainly forgotten crimes, 15 teams had points deducted. Dupnitza, in fact, earned 44 points and should have been 5th, but 7 points were taken out, thus, 19th. The lucky team was Arda (Kardzhaly), the only one bellow the top 6 without deducted points – thanks to the penalization of Dupnitza, they survived, ending 18th with 38 points. Equal clubs – either that, or rampant match-fixing took place – but the league was sharply divided between 4 strong teams and insignificant bulk. Either that, or… corruption again: new rule was enforced this season in the first division and possibly for the second division as well – if a match ends with scoreless tie, 0-0, nobody gets points. Fine, although hardly making sense rule, until one looks again at the final table – the leading 4 teams lost no points. Only two other teams did not lose points, but they hardly had any ties – Svetkavitza, 5th, had only 1 tie, and Arda – 4. Shell we speculate a little? A agreement of the whole league – let score one each every game and start the really playing after that. USSR used similar rule with the same agreement back in the 1970s. Corruption or not? Well… two teams were expelled after the end of the season for corruption… suspicion is valid. Prove is another matter – who is caught pays, who is not – smiles and claims innocence, high morals, etc. Prove depends mostly on not very moral actions in football – if we remember the West German match-fixing scandal in the early 70s: the movers and shakers of the scheme ‘uncovered’ it when it did not work for them.
Osam (Lovech) was 17th with 38 points.
Neftokhimik (Burgas) – 12th with 39 points.
Septemvriiska slava (Mikhailovgrad, today Montana) – 11th with 39 points.
Dobrudzha (Tolbukhin, today Dobrich) – 9th with 39 points. And so it went.
But what mattered here was the race for promotion, involving 4 teams. All former first-division members. They battled to the very end, but the teams who stepped on the pedals in the spring-half of the championship won. Haskovo and Shumen were on top after the fall-half finished, but they had no real lead and small mistakes rather than great performance changed the positions in the spring. Haskovo (Haskovo) finished 4th with 51 points – 8 points ahead of the 5th placed Svetkavitza (Targovishte), just to give you a taste of the difference between these 4 leaders and the rest. Shumen (Shumen) took 3rd place with 53 points. Goal-difference defied them – Lokomotiv (Plovidv), the best scorers of the championship, clinched 2nd place. Shumen most likely fixed a game or two in order to get promoted and were caught. They and Pirin (Gotze Delchev), 7th in the final table. It was rather obvious – Shumen needed to win by any means; Pirin, secure in mid-table and playing for nothing, did not mind getting some cash from those in need of points. Hardly the only clubs using illegal means, but they were caught somehow and expelled from the league after the end of the season. Oh, well… justice for big fish and for small fish: no mercy for small fry like Shumen and Pirin (and conveniently, the too-large division was reduce to 20 teams). CSKA and Levski, though, remained in the same division they were expelled with massive noise from.
Lokomotiv (Plovdiv) clinched 2nd place with 53 points and better goal-difference than Shumen, and got promoted. Sitting from left: Roumen Staykov, Fedya Mikov, Eduard Eranosyan, Anyo Sadkov, Georgy Andreev – chairman of the club, Khristo Sotirov, Ivan Bedelev, Krassimir Kostov, Georgy Karushev.
Middle row: Slavcho Hadzhiev – masseur, Khristo Kolev, Georgy Tashev, Emil Illiev, Lyubomir Burnarsky, Khristo Bonev – coach, Stefan Draganov, Lyubomir Koradov, Bogomil Tilev, Georgy Popov, Vassil Ankov – assistant coach.
Top row: Dimitar Kalkanov, Ivan Georgiev, Racho Kilapov, Atanas Marinov, Georgy Dimitrov, Georgy Tenev, Lachezar Mitzin.
Return to top league football was the aim, so well done and everybody happy, but Lokomotiv suffered from imbalance for almost a decade. It had been a squad of two parts and remained so, unfortunately – Sadkov and Eranosyan were national team players and Khristo Kolev was going to join them soon. Atanas Marinov was also no stranger to the national team, but suffered of heavy injuries and played little. Tenev was highly praised goalkeeper of the junior national team. Sotirov, Karushev, Dimitrov, Draganov, Koradov were also noted for their abilities and much was expected from them in near future. Most of the squad was home grown, coming from the youth system of the club, but as a while, most of the players were very young and inexperienced. Their game was uneven, the team was plagued by injuries and suspensions. Yes, they won the Soviet Army Cup a year ago, but even winning Second Division was too much for them. The legendary Christo Bonev captained them on the way to the Cup and called it a day after that to become the coach of team. An young coach, without much experience yet – eventually, the former great player will become very good coach, but this was his beginning and it was not all that fantastic. The near future did not look very bright – observers had strong reservations, noting many shortcomings of the team, especially when playing against tight defenses and under pressure. The talent was there, but the mentality was not right. Lokomotiv depended mostly on its strikers, the defense was weak and fragile, and it was pretty much a gambling of outscoring the opponents – all or nothing. Even in second division this was not very successful approach – true, Lokomotiv scored most goals in the league, but relegated Dupnitza allowed fewer goals in their net; Lokomotiv lost 11 games and the best they could do was 2nd place and that just on slightly better goal-difference. If the stars – Sadkov, Eranosyan, and Kolev – left for stronger teams and Atanas Marinov did not recover… better not think about it. Lokomotiv was still paying heavy price for the grave mistake made in the middle of the 1970s – a group of veterans, Bonev included, were kept way too long, the team became divided into very old players and bunch of inexperienced youngsters, who never had a chance to take leading positions and dispirited left one after another the team. Then the old simply became too old and quit, and there was nobody else. So far, the division remained, it was not a homogenous squad, there was no balance and no worthy substitutes – the reserves, almost half the team, were not top league material. Mind, pretty much the same squad, with the same imbalance, was relegated the previous year from first division, lasting only one season.
Akademik (Svishtov) won the championship with 54 points from 23 wins, 9 ties, and 10 losses. Scored 67 goals, received 32 – the best defensive record this year, but 4 teams scored more goals than them. Sitting from left: Petrov, Ilchev, Ivanov, Venkov, Metodiev, Trenchev, Redzhev, Moskov.
Middle row: Atanassov – assistant coach, Andreev, E. Assenov, L. Assenov, Gelov – coach, Borissov, Russinov, Marinov, Donchev – masseur.
Top row: Toskov, Botev, Staykov, Georgiev, Filev, Peychev, Mateev.
Difficult victory, given the circumstances – it could have gone another way. But it was also fair, again, under the circumstances: Shumen was caught red-handed. For Akademik, it was a second time they won promotion to the top league – a wonderful success, but their predicament worked against them. This was ‘students’ club, attached somewhat to the local University of Economics. The University had good reputation, but the city was small and money were far from great. The main attraction was relatively easy given degree and profession, which appealed to few football players. As a students club, the squad was never very strong and also very unstable – players came from afar, stayed a few years until getting degree and left. It was structural problem more than anything – all ‘students’ clubs had no way of keeping players after they finished education, it was somewhat against the rules. That was why Akademik lasted only two seasons the first time they moved up to the top league and there was no reason to believe this time would be different: the squad had no resemblance of the team playing in the first division only a few years back. It was entirely different, yet, of the same make: mostly little known players. Nine players had top league experience, but they were mostly second-raters at best. Some showed promise years ago, like the full-back Ivan Ilchev, formerly of Chernomoretz (Burgas), but later stalled and seemingly decided to take it easy and get education instead. It was very experienced team, but from second division perspective. Of course, there were interesting names – the goalkeeper Kiril Peychev, formerly of Trakia (Plovdiv) played for the national team, but had heavy competition in Trakia and spent many years on the bench. The mid-field dynamo Lozan Trenchev, a late-bloomer, had been the motor of Belasitza (Petrich), but when his former club was quite unfairly relegated, he decided to make the best in the few years left to play and moved to Akademik – he was already 32 years old. Ilchev, of course, was also a player with good reputation. There were few promising youngsters – Iliya Redzhev, formerly of Pirin (Blagoevgrad), the Assenov brothers, formerly of Botev (Vratza) – but players like Roland Georgiev were the norm: once upon a time he was seen as promising junior and moved to the first team of Levski (Sofia). It was short encounter with top league football – he played only one match in the first division, then meandered through various small second-division clubs until joining Akademik. Now he was approaching 30 and only the team captain Nikola Moskov (who never played in the first division) and Lozan Trenchev had more second-division games than him. Nice squad, but not a first-division squad and it was clear that new recruits were needed, including a new coach, for Yanko Gelov was similar to his team – plenty of experience, but largely second-division experience with smallish clubs. It was also clear that the inevitable newcomers would not be very strong names, but various discards from other clubs.