The Cups and the scandal. The difficult issue of two national cups. No way the old Soviet Army Cup to be abolished – it was political matter. It was continued and theoretically at least the winner should have been getting one of the UEFA Cup spots Bulgaria had. In reality, it was a tournament of no importance. However, in the yearly books of the time it was still listed as the primary Cup of the country. This season was the 40th issue of the torunament. Cherno more (Varna) and CSKA reached the final this year. It ended as expected – CSKA, even fielding some reserves, including new player of yet very uncertain qualities, named Christo Stoichkov, for a few minutes, destroyed Cherno more 4-0.
Thanks to the great shadow of the scandal, time plays cruelly on history: this is recent arrangement of the picture of the winners and it is wrongly named – CSKA was still CSKA when they won the Soviet Army Cup, but here they are named Sredetz, the name they got a little later. Standing from left: M. Manolov – coach, G. Dimitrov, L. Tanev, A. Chervenkov, N. Mladenov, K. Yanchev, G. Velinov, V. Tinchev, Y. Dimitrov, M. Tomanov, Em. Buchinsky, St. Yordanov – assistant coach.
Crouching: Tzv. Atanassov – assistant coach, Kr. Dossev, St. Mladenov, Chr. Stoichkov, G. Slavkov, Il. Voynov, Kr. Bezinsky, R. Zdravkov.
This final is often confused with the final in 1986 today, when Sredetz won againt Lokomotiv (Sofia). But most importantly it was left out of the 1985 scandal – this was the only tournament not affected by the scandal. CSKA, disbanded, expelled from first division, Bulgarian Cup not awarded and records stripped, still remained Soviet Army up winner. Why was that? Possibly, it was overlooked in the great frenzy for penalizing – the tournament was of so little importance and simply forgotten. More likely it was left intact for political reasons – not to enrage the Soviets by abolishing their gift. Thus, there was no more CSKA except for the purpose of the Soviet Army Cup. Yet, there was something to put under the table… theoretically, the Soviet Cup winner should get UEFA Cup spot. But CSKA was no more and part of the penalties was not to play in Europe. It was murky case and quickly put under the carpet – CSKA was rightful winner, so not to be replaced by the losing finalist. Neither CSKA, nor Cherno more got UEFA Cup spot – it went to Pirin (Blagoevgrad), suddenly placed 3rd in the final table of championship after CSKA and Levski were expelled and their records stripped. Anyway, this was the only real winner of Bulgarian tournaments which remained intact.
The ill fated Bulgarian Cup final. Levski – CSKA, the big tense derby, with layers of meaning and always ready to explode. The opposition was unsolvable: ‘the people’ vs ‘the state’. Even after Levski was amalgamated with the Police club Spartak the flavor of ‘people’ vs ‘Communists’ was not removed. Additionally, the clubs represented the Ministry of Defense, the Army, vs the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Police, with their own powers, influences, and interests. Both clubs had mighty supporters among the highest levels of the Communist Party, with CSKA having particularly strong and scheming one. But at the core of the conflict the Communist Party leaned towards CSKA – forget about who was fan of whom, forget about sport, remember ideology, for it was in the center of it: CSKA was created specifically to represent the new, Communist sport, and its supremacy over the defeated, but somehow not entirely wiped out Capitalism. To attack CSKA meant to attack Communism. To weaken CSKA meant to weaken the Socialist state and its leaders. So, often referees were instructed if not to help actively CSKA to victory, at least to put a blind eye to various infringements. In turn, tempers of the players quickly flared and the games transformed into ugly battles. Incidents happened so often, that foreign referees were called for the derby since early 1960s – and matches with foreign referees were played fairly, unlike those with Bulgarian referees. Levski tended to insist on foreign referees, CSKA normally preferred Bulgarians, who could be threatened and manipulated. That was the historic background, to which recent particulars were added to make the mixture explosive: this was the 100th match between the arch-enemies and recently Levski dominated the clash. Levski won the last 7 matches and CSKA had not win since 1982, 9 consecutive derbies altogether. This was big insult without anything else, but there was more: In the 1980 CSKA built its third great team, which won 4 titles in a row. There was real hope the golden 1950s, entirely dominated by CSKA to be repeated. The squad was great and young, and so far was running fine. But a bit later Levski had its own great young squad,which not only challenged CSKA, but now appeared to come on top and dominate Bulgarian football – they won everything in 1984, now got second title in a row, and there was no stopping. It was not only younger team than the CSKA’s squad, which did not even reached its peak yet, but it was home-grown team. That was part of mythology, which Levski’s fans waited quite long to happen again: the ‘blues’ were ‘real’ team, making its own players, unlike CSKA, stealing talent from the whole country. After Levski was taken by the Police, it became like CSKA and point was lost, but now the talented juniors were back at last. Not only that, but the boys were different – they openly identified themselves with the fans, they had ‘the true spirit’. No wonder: most of the team were both fans and players of Levski since early childhood, they came from the youth system of the club, but also from the stands, and often acted more like fans than players: beating CSKA was much more than just a football game for the, they were gangly, cocky, fearless, and acted together – after all, they were together since early childhood and were good friends. This spirit, perhaps more than talent, scared CSKA officials, for it looked like they openly defied state power and inspired the real fans into rebellious behavior. Perhaps if they were not winning, they could be tolerated – but they were winning and CSKA was seemingly going to be behind them for a long time. And to make the bomb ticking quicker, both clubs had coaches who never shied away from dirty tricks and provocations, fighters, who went to the derby as if going to war, and not really restraining their players, but encouraging them to fight by any means. Of course, nobody will ever know who gave what instructions to the referee, but it was clear from the beginning of the match that it will be troublesome one. Jumping a bit ahead of time, the referee Asparoukh Yasenov always denied that he was ‘instructed’ to help CSKA – he claimed that he made mistakes and lost the match because of the high pressure of refereeing the derby, his fault, but no more than that. Except he blamed the scorer of the first illegal goal for not telling him he played with a hand. He did not see it, Yasenov said, the line referee did not signal either, but Georgy Slavkov never confessed to him. Well, there is no player in the world, who will go to the referee and tell him to disallow his own goal – and Slavkov said exactly that: yes, he played with a hand, but it was not his job to call fouls – it was the referee’s job. The referee allowed the goal, a fact. It was the referee’s job to judge, a fact. So, at the end Yasenov insisted only on crushing under pressure and allowing the game to slip out of his hands, a weak spirit, not up to the task, not experienced enough. His explanations never convinced anybody, for all of that happened many times before – usually CSKA provoked and was let go unpunished, which triggered retaliation by Levski, also allowed by the referee as a compensation, the match deteriorates into open fighting and referee at the end expels players from both teams, not making any distinction between guilty and innocent. At the end, both teams are angry and complain. And that was what happened in this time as well. At first CSKA went into attack and pressed Levski back. Levski started somewhat sluggishly, but such things happened many times before. Some questionable tackles were made, but nothing out of hand yet. Until the 26th minute, when Slavkov scores the opening goal after playing with his hand. Everybody sees it except the referee. No signal from the liner, yet, it happened right in front of him. The goal is allowed, Levski players are enraged, surround the referee and push him every each way. Yasenov immediately gives the impression of a guilty man – instead of showing cards and firmly restore order, he seems to be trying to run away from his attackers and the incident lasts too long. Now everybody is sure that the referee is biased. His authority is lost. Levski is enraged, CSKA players also clearly understand that referee lost his authority and will allow anything just to compensate for this goal. Both teams has short-fused fighters, ready to break bones. The war begins in earnest, the coaches do nothing to calm down tempers. The match deteriorates immediately, ugly tackles happened one after another and every call of Yasenov is immediately protested by both teams. Near the end of first half CSKA scores second goal, which is fair, but damage is done already and nothing could be fair anymore. The second half begins with particularly ill mood, there is hardly any football played – everybody just tries to kill the nearest opponent. And Yasenov does nothing… Plamen Nikolov (Levksi) should be sent off , but he only gets lame yellow card. Yanchev (CSKA) should be sent off for hunting brutally Emil Spassov, the gentle midfielder of Levski, and was not even warned. Then Plamen Nikolov tackles Zdravkov of CSKA so badly, Zdravkov was sent directly to hospital, and only now Yasenov expels Nikolov. But nobody is guilty anymore – everybody protests and ugly mood only escalates, both teams transformed into berserk murderers. Yanchev tackles Spassov just out of spite and Spassov is finally provoked to reatiliation, for it is clear that the referee will do nothing. He grabs Yanchev by throat and only now Yasenov interferes, redcarding both players. This incident triggers a fight between both teams, including the reserves and the coaching stuff. Meantime CSKA gets a penalty, immediately protested by Levski with much pushing of Yasenov, who again does not show cards. CSKA does not score the penalty, which enrages them, for the save boosts both Lesvki players and fans – now it looks like the game could be turned against the odds and CSKA does not like that. They respond with brutality, triggering the mass fight on the pitch. This is the moment Yasenov to stop the game – but he does not. He expels Spassov and Yanchev, which is unfair – Spassov, a player who was never booked in his already 10-years long career, is not guilty. He only retaliated to brutality left to run free for long – the referee did not do anything to stop it, so what else to do after one is kicked around. The match continues for some foggy reason known only to the referee and the stupid officials of the game, who did not interfere and stop the game either. Levski gets a penalty, which CSKA does not like, of course, and Sirakov scores. 1-2 and 8 minutes to fight. Levski tries hard to equalize, but unable to score. Game over, CSKA wins 2-1. But nobody is happy, the mood is so bad, a fight starts again in the tunnel leading to the dressing rooms. This time the coaches, Manol Manolov, CSKA, and Vassil Metodiev, Levski, are involved. The last fight had no witnesses, so it hard to say what really happened – years later both coaches dismissed the story, but they were also like that: fighters. Even if they really fought, it was nothing special for either of them – a few punches, big deal. Does not count as anything. It was shameful match, but hardly all that terrible – ugly tackling, fights, deliberate injuries of opponents, arguing and pushing the referee – all that happened many times before and there were uglier and more scandalous clashes in the past. May be the match should have been stopped and abandoned, when it became clear it went out of hand, but it was not.
CSKA got the Cup, the spell was broken, they won at last against Levski. Nobody looked paricularly happy after all what happened on the field, but game over and life could go on. And it did until the next morning.
The Comminist Party reaction was quick, surprising, and heavy-handed. The next morning the newspapers announced its decision: it denounced the hooliganism of the previous night as something entirely despicable and advised the Football Federation to punish the culprits as follows – the final to be voided and the Cup to be given to anybody this year. CSKA and Levski to be disbanded, expelled from the championship as well, and their records stripped; their functionaries punished and expelled from sports, coaches and players suspended and fined. The whole thing was presented as a advisory proposition to the Football Federation and the Central Sport Committee, but nobody made the mistake to believe the wording – it was an order.
This order made something unthinkable – CSKA was not only a Cup winner for a night, but seized to exist. The creation and the symbol of the Communist power was no more, abolished by its own creator. That is why the photo of the winning team is worth showing – it was and it was no more. It was strong and talented squad, suddenly perished. Top row from left: Bezinsky, Slavkov, Markov, Dr. Fillipov – doctor, Levonyan -masseur, Yanchev, Tinchev.
Middle row: St. Yordanov – assistant coach, Kostadinov, Todorov, Velinov, Bogomilov, Dossev, Y. Dimitrov, Kirov, M. Manolov – coach.
Sitting: Kerimov, Zdravkov, N. Mladenov, G. Dimitrov, Tanev, St. Mladenov, Voynov.
The Party order was followed, of course, only to add more bitterness. Levski and CSKA were disbanded, there was no Bulgarian Cup winner this year, and Trakia was proclaimed champion of the country out of the blue. Clubs, belonging to big structures were forbidden – namely, clubs belonging to the Ministry of Defense (CSKA), the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Levski-Spartak), the Ministry of Transportation (Lokomotiv Sofia), and Headquarters of Building Army (a peculiar branch of the military, where soldiers served their spells as workers in industrial plants and large building sites – Slavia Sofia belonged to this body). Backtracking started just as soon as the Party announced its severe decision: Lokomotiv and Slavia had nothing to do with the Cup final, but were penalized – somehow, it was not good to highlight only CSKA and Levski, let make a bulk. Naturally, functionaries of both clubs and both coaches were penalized – the coaches, the lowest in the hierarchy, got the most severe punishment: banished from having anything to do with football. That is, they were forbidden to practice the only profession they had for life. There were fines as well, but fines were peanuts compared to taken away a profession. With players, things were more selective and suspect: Plamen Nikolov, Borislav Mikhailov, Emil Velev, and Emil Spassov of Levski-Spartak and Christo Stoichkov of CSKA were banished for life. Hasko Sirakov, Miroslav Baychev (Levski-Spartak) and Vassil Tinchev (CSKA) were suspended for 1 year. Kostadin Yanchev (CSKA) was suspended for 3 months. It is debatable who was more or less guilty, but the distribution of penalties was clearly one-sided and far from fare: Levski players were hunted down, but hardly those of CSKA. Key regular players of Levski were eliminated, but no such players of CSKA – Tinchev was not exactly a leading player and Stoichkov – just a newcomer, who played only a few games, not a regular and not a star at all. Kostadoin Yanchev who brutally tackled and provoked Emil Spassov to retaliation got only 3-month suspension and his victim, a mellow player, never involved in any dirty tricks, was banished for life. Why Baychev was suspended is a mystery – he also was not a brutal player and was hardly involved more than others in the fracas. On this level, CSKA was practically let go – young Stoichkov was the scapegoat, just to show that CSKA is punished too, but the fact is he was the least important member of the squad and although heavily involved with fighting on the pitch, he was practically sacrificed. No star of CSKA was penalized when half of the regular team of Levski was out for life. The worst penalty was reserved for Plamen Nikolov and Emil Spassov and it was not even named: both were to be transferred to FC Porto and now the deal was quietly killed. Easy doing: since they were banished from football, what transfer? There were no such players. Fairness really went to the drain with the penalties – CSKA was disbanded for despicable behavior, yet, there were players committing despicable acts. It was clear from this moment that all is just a gas and restoration will take place. Little doubt about it… abolishing CSKA cannot be, for it was an abolishing a key Communist symbol. But restoring CSKA cannot happen without restoring Levski-Spartak – it will be both, measured were taken really to weaken Levski. Mind, abolished were only the football sections of multi-sport clubs CSKA and Levski-Spartak – the clubs themselves remained, contrary to the original wording of the Party’s decision. They remained exactly as CSKA and Levski-Spartak, which remained under the sponsorship of Army and Police, in all other sports they participated with teams named CSKA and Levski-Spartak. So, it was not exactly what the Party ordered when its great anger was unleashed – powerful voices of the same Party spoke otherwise behind the scenes almost as as soon as the rush decision was published and recovery was already started. And that made the whole affair even more unfair – it had nothing to do with justice, with injured morals, with correcting shameful incident. It was just a stupid vitriol and inside battles between power holders and lies. It was heavy blow and not only to CSKA and Levski – bystanders suffered too, becoming collateral damage. Financially, may be Lokomotiv (Sofia) was the biggest victim, for they had less money than anybody to begin with – now they were cut even from that. As symbols go, supporters of many provincial clubs practically lost their identity, for out of the blue their clubs were renamed – and they had nothing to do with the ill-fated final. As corruption and black deals and scheming and influencing go – well, it was fine as ever, nothing changed. The bribing scandal in the Second Division was uncovered at the same time the Party waived its great banner of justice – and put under the lid just as quickly, for if real investigation and justice had to be done, important Party people had to go to jail. In the whole noise one other thing was left almost unnoticed: the stupid referee allowing the final to deteriorate was hardly ever mentioned and not punished at all. Behind all this lunacy was the powerful member of the Central Committee of the Comunist Party Milko Balev – a vivid supporter of CSKA, whose hatred of Levski was bigger than his love for CSKA. And because of him, another dark figure is hardly ever mentioned and practically forgotten today – his name does not even comes to mind today, but he hated Sofia clubs, supported Trakia (Plovdiv), and did a lot to push his own agenda, seizing the moment – destroy the Sofianites and make Trakia champion. Petty aim, thus, even more destructive. Justice… there was nothing just at all. Problems popped out right away, quickening the backtracking – the immediate one was the qualifications for the World Cup. Bulgaria had a chance and wanted to go the finals,and the Party was never to sacrifice some kind of popular glory for justice. Those banned for life were key national team players… they were restored, all punished players. The aftermath… the next season was unusual, because CSKA and Levski, now under new names, were in disarray, but only for that season. The Party did not even had the guts to move the ‘expelled’ and ‘disbanded’ teams to the Second Division. Christo Stoichkov still has a grudge for the ‘bastards’ – meaning mostly the Football Federation – for almost destroying his career before it even started: he was the likeliest candidate to serve at least a large chunk of his original penalty, for he was nobody, thus, the easiest showcase of ‘principles in action’. CSKA was openly back under Army umbrella after less than two years, Levski back in the hands of the Police, although this was supposed to be a secret. Nothing changed except the names were new – and hated by the fans of both clubs; trophies for this season were lost – and restored years later; Bulgaria had no team for the Cup Winners Cup for the 1985-65 issue of the tournament; players fretted for awhile that their penalties may be real – but perhaps by the start of 1986 even Stoichkov was not assured that there was nothing to fret about. Coaches and functionaries were not exactly left jobless and even Nikolov and Spassov went to play abroad. These two were the only ones to really suffer – FC Porto was just beginning its great climb leading them to winning the European Champions Cup. Nikolov and Spassov may have been part of this success – but they lost the contract and playing a bit in Sweden and Belgium was hardly a consolation.