The futsal national team makes international debut
08 January 2004
The Bulgarian futsal national team will make its international tournament debut today, facing Romania in a qualification match for the European futsal championship 2005. The tournament of our qualification group will take place at the Palace of Culture and Sports in Varna.
Since this is Bulgaria’s international debut, they will start at the bottom – the preliminary round. Six other teams will also fight their way up starting at the bottom. Bulgaria is in Group A, in the company of Romania, Kazakhstan and Armenia. The teams will play each other once, with all games taking place in “Kongresna” hall in The Palace of Culture and Sport, Varna, Bulgaria. Only the winners of the two groups advance to the next qualifying stage of the tournament, which consists of 28 teams, split into seven groups of four. If Bulgaria wins its Preliminary group, the team will be placed in next round’s Qualifying Group 2, together with Ukraine, Belarus and Slovakia. The winner of that group will secure a place at the 2005 European Championship finals, teaming up with the winners of the other six groups and the Czech Republic, who will host the event.
A record-breaking 34 countries signed up for participation in Euro 2005. That is the reason why UEFA had to set up a Preliminary round.
Bulgaria’s task to win the group is everything but easy. The inarguable favorites in Group A are Kazakhstan. Their team will start from the bottom only because their federation joined UEFA only recently and currently has a low coefficient. For the years they competed in Asia, however, Kazakhstan had some notable appearances in the Asian Championship. The team managed a top-three finish in 1999 and 2000, and also earned its place at the 2000 Futsal World Cup in Guatemala. In the Qualifying round for the 2004 World Cup in Taiwan, however, Kazakhstan could not manage to finish top of their group. The 4-1 trashing of Andorra could not compensate their 3-1 defeat against one of the superpowers of European futsal – Ukraine. Another serious opponent for Bulgaria will be the team of Romania. The Romanians have already taken part in a couple of international futsal competitions and the experience they have gained may prove to be decisive in the match against the Bulgarian “lions”. However, Romania had a tough time in the 2004 WC Qualifications and defeats against the Czech Republic and Israel meant a bottom-of-the-group position for them. Furthermore, both friendly matches between Bulgaria and Romania in the end of 2003 ended with draws, which comes to show that a good result against them should be considered a surprise. Armenia is probably the underdog of the group, but unlike Bulgaria, they have already played in international matches. Even though they finished winless and bottom of both their WC 2004 and Euro 2003 Qualifying groups, their international experience should not be underestimated.
The matches in Euro 2005 Preliminary Group A will be played between January 8th and 11th, with Saturday, January 10th initially scheduled as an off-day. Because of problems with the flight of the Armenian national team, however, their game versus Kazakhstan was rescheduled and instead of on the 8th, will be played on the 10th. The first match is played today at 19:00 – the Balkan derby between Bulgaria and Romania. Tomorrow is our game against favorites Kazakhstan, and the last match is on Sunday against Armenia. A name that makes impression on the Bulgarian roster is that of captain Valentin Stanchev, a Spartak Varna legend and a former CSKA Sofia football player. He is currently playing for MAG (Varna) in the Bulgarian futsal championship.
Futsal is the indoors version of mini-football, officially recognized by FIFA and UEFA, and has been progressing at a constant level in the last few years. Games are played indoors, with the size of the pitch being approximately 40 meters in length and 20 meter in width. The penalty area is 6 meters away from the goal line, the same distance as the penalty spot. 10 meters away from the goal line is the second penalty spot. The goals are 3 meter high and 2 meters wide. The pitch can be from several different materials, but preferably it will be wood or other artificial materials. Each team consists of five players, one of which is the goalkeeper. A team can have up to seven substitutes, with no restriction on the number of substitutions. A substituted player can return on the pitch anytime, by substituting another player. Four officials are in charge of the game – two on-pitch referees, a time-keeper and an assistant referee, who can take the place of any of the on-pitch referees in the case of an injury. There are two 20-minute long half-times with a break of no more than 15 minutes between them. The clock is stopped whenever there is a stop of play and the half-time is over as soon as the 20 minutes on the clock are over. Time may be added on by the referee only if a penalty was given before the final whistle and it has to be taken. Each team has the right to call one time-out in each of the half-times. A player can be booked by the referee for an offense, and if he is booked twice, he is sent-off and cannot continue playing in the match. A player who is sent-off can be substituted two minutes after his dismissal. During those two minutes, his team will be playing with four players on the pitch. Taking free-kicks is essentially the same as in football, with the wall at least 5 meters away from the ball.
The first European Futsal Championship was unofficial and took place in 1996. A year later UEFA recognized the European Championship and made it official. The first official European Championship was in 1999 and it was decided that it would take place every two years. Bulgaria now join the qualifications for the fourth official European futsal championship, Euro 2005. Four Futsal World Cups have already taken place, with the fifth one scheduled to take place later this year in Taiwan.
:: Euro 2005 qualifications, Prel.rd, Group "A" ::.
:: Futsal - the rules of the game ::.
Slavia (Sofia) appoint new coach
29 December 2003
Serbian Ratko Dostanic is the new head coach of Slavia (Sofia) as of Sunday, the 28th of December 2003. Atanas Dzhambazki, who was at the helm of the team until now, remains in the team as assistant coach of Dostanic. Dostanic's contract is for 2,5 years, i.e. until the end of the 2005/2006 season.
Some time ago Dostanic was assistant coach of Slavolub Muslin in Levski (Sofia) , then he left the squad for the Serbian team Obilic (Belgrade). Thence Dostanic took over Sartid (Smederevo) and although the team finished the 2002/2003 season as low as 11th place in the Serbian league, Dostanic managed to steer Sartid to the Serbian Cup final where his team defeated 1-0 Crvena Zvezda thus qualifying for the Uefa Cup. There Sartid passed the preliminary round of the competition but was knocked out by Slavia (Prague). The 2003/2004 season started well for Dostanic and Sartid as at the midpoint of the championship his team is standing third in the rankings just behind the big guns Crvena Zvezda and Partizan (Belgrade). Days before he signed his contract with Slavia (Sofia), Dostanic left his former team pointing out disaccordance with the managerial staff as a reason for his resignation.
With the appointment of Dostanic Slavia carries on the tradition of the last few years to sign mainly Serbian coaches at the helm of the team - Jarko Olarevic (twice) and Miodrag Jesic also lead the squad recently.
Former coach Atanas Dzhambazki was assistant coach of Jesic who started the 2003/2004 season as head coach of Slavia (Sofia). After a shaky start and two losses in three matches (one of the games lost 0:3 to Makedonska slava in Round 3), Jesic was forced to resign, leaving the team in the relegation zone after the first three rounds of the league. He was succeeded at the position by Dzhambazki, who lead the 'belite' to the third place in the fall table as he lost only to Levski (Sofia) and drew level in the derby match against Lokomotiv (Sofia) thus repeating the achievement of Dostanic in the Serbian league. Meanwhile Dzhambazki succeeded in inflicting one of Lokomotiv (Plovdiv)'s two defeats, providing Slavia with a good position only three points off the top for the matches to come after the winter break. However, in the Cup of Bulgaria competition Slavia was knocked out by Litex (Lovech) as early as the 1/8 finals with the 'belite' suffering a humiliating defeat in Lovech.
Through its media appearances the club management did its best to point that the arrival of Dostanic will preserve the current course of work in the team and succession will be a primary goal not only in the playstyle but also in the structure of the coaching staff as the change should not be regarded as a sign of mistrust towards Dzhambazki but as an opportunity for the young coach to gain more experience through his work with Dostanic. The winter preparation plans are not to be altered for the time being. For now Atanas Dzhambazki remains at the club as assistant coach of Dostanic; his assistants Plamen Nikolov (goalkeeper coach) and Ognyan Makaveev (physical condition) will keep their jobs, too.
Stilyan Petrov - Bulgarian Footballer of the Year
23 December 2003
The captain of the national team and Celtic player Stilyan Petrov was officially announced today the winner in the 45th edition of the traditional Bulgarian Footballer of the Year inquiry of PH 'Start' and the 'Football' newspaper. Dimitar Berbatov and Martin Petrov complemented the first three places in the prestigeous rankings.
This inquiry determines the best overall footballer for the past period through voting among the sport journalists at the end of each year. That is the first Footballer of the Year award for Stilyan Petrov, who won convincingly with 279 points. Last year's winner in the competition Dimitar Berbatov (Bayer Leverkusen) took second place with 195 points and Martin Petrov (Wolfsburg) collected 79 points thus complementing the first three.
Another footballer playing in Germany - Mariyan Hristov (Kaiserslautern) came up fourth with 64 points, Vladimir Manchev (Lille) was fifth with 58 points, followed by Georgi Peev (Dinamo Kiyv) and Svetoslav Todorov (Portsmouth).
The CSKA (Sofia) midfielder Emil Gargorov was the highest placed footballer among those playing in Bulgaria - 8th place; Krassimir Balakov who retired this summer was 9th and the teammates in Levski (Sofia) Dimitar Ivankov and Iliyan Stoyanov were given equal number of votes for the 10th place.
In the classification by field positions for best Bulgarian players based in the domestic "A" PFG Dimitar Ivankov won the award for best goalkeeper, Iliyan Stoyanov was elected for best defender and Emil Gargorov - for best midfielder. Although failing to find a place in the first ten for the Bulgarian Footballer of the Year competition, Martin Kamburov (Lokomotiv Plovdiv) was given the prize for best attacker in the league as well as for the football player, showing biggest progress. The coach of the national team Plamen Markov took the best coach prize and Doncho Donev (Lokomotiv Sofia) won the fairplay award.
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06 March 2004
11 January 2004