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Author: georgie
Date: 27-08-2005, 22:13

I am a Bolton fan who is interested in knowing the location of the Plovdiv v Bolton game.
Apparantly Plovdiv dont play their home ties at their own ground and played their last match at Burgas.
It is rumoured that Plovdiv are trying to get the game switched to the National stadium in Sofia....but Levski and CSKA would also be at home on the same night.
Do you think it possible that 3 Uefa Cup 2nd leg matches could take place in Sofia on the same night?

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: LevskiFan Date: 27-08-2005, 23:01 Edited by: LevskiFan at: 27-08-2005, 23:01	I haven't heard anything about Loko playing in Sofia....and its not gonna happen in my opinion! Their staff said that they will play all their matches in Burgas! Btw are u coming for the match?

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: georgie Date: 28-08-2005, 00:47	Yes,it is Bolton's first ever European away fixture and i have booked a flight to Sofia.I think it will mean a long coach journey to Burgas as well though!The club have said that they expect 2,000 to travel. Do you think the police would allow Levski,Cska and Plovdiv to play in Sofia on the same day?

Author: sampfan83
Date: 28-08-2005, 01:08

it is impossible to have 3 fixtures in the same day in sofia - not only that this never happened in the history of european competitions to have 3 matches in the same city in the same day, but also because there are only 3 stadiums in Sofia that have the license to host european matches and levski and cska will take their own ones (and cska's stadium is just next to the third one which makes helding another match there will be troublesome...) but because Plovdiv are playing their matches in Burgas anyway and I do not see a reason for them to change location.

As soon as you come to Sofia will have to take a bus to Burgas and this will take you some 5-6 hours to reach the seaside city of Burgas. In other words, I think you'll have to book a flight for a day earlier and not for the day of the game.

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: georgie Date: 28-08-2005, 01:26	thanks for that info sampfan. One of our fans was told by a Bulgarian journalist that Plovdiv were asking uefa to play the game in Sofia. I think now the only possibility of that happening would be if the game took place on the Wednesday or Friday. My flight is for Wednesday....so it looks like a coach journey across Bulgaria on Thursday!

Author: cattle_ripper
Date: 28-08-2005, 09:24
Edited by: cattle_ripper
at: 28-08-2005, 09:31

georgie, that's right. loko pd want to play against Bolton in Sofia, mainly because Sofia is some 120 km away from their town and Bourgas on the other hand is about 3 times that far.
loko pd played the match against the serbians in Bourgas, because it was in august during the tourist season at the black sea resorts ... but in the end of september in Bourgas there won't be too much people to support them, so they now want to play in Sofia.

however, you're right CSKA & Levski will play on the same date and their stadiums are in completely different parts of the town, so it won't be that much of problem if kick-off hours of these two matches are different. but if loko pd are also to play on the same date - then CSKA stadium and the National stadium - which lokomotiv wants to use are just a thousand meters away from one another.

so i really can't see that happen.

so if, loko want to play in sofia, either the second leg in Bulgaria has to be moved for a different day - Tuesday for instance, or both legs have to be swapped ...

if not, i can't really see loko play in sofia.

Author: Nick
Date: 28-08-2005, 09:56
Edited by: Nick
at: 28-08-2005, 10:08

He, he, he...3 matches in 1 day in Sofia. The police will go crazy

Maybe Loko can play on the Slavia or Lokomotive Sofia stadiums. Lokomotive has individual seats for 18 000 people, so it's an option actually. Lkomotive stadium is also very far away from both CSKA and Levski stadiums. Only they must license it for UEFA competitions, which they didn't so far because nobody at Loko Sofia thought they would need such a license. Slavia has something like 5000 individual seats. The starium capacity is 30 000 but most are not individual and so not suited for UEFA Games. The national stadium is the other option but that's too close to the CSKA stadium. Also CSKA may want to switch to the National Stadium too, if they get a good result in Leverkusen because it's 2 times bigger and they will get more money from tickets.
Sofia will be a cool city on Sept.29th

200 english fans + all the fans of CSKA, Levski and Loko (3 out of 4 biggest supporters groups in Bulgaria). I really don't want to be a police officer on that day

georgie: There are not that many options because only a few stadiums are licensed for UEFA Cup games: Litex Stadium in Lovech (100 km from Sofia!), Naftex Stadium in Burgas (you can take a plane - it's 40 min. from Sofia with a plane and tickets are less than 50 Euro!)...and well the 3 games situation in Sofia. Some ppl here also said Loko wants to play in Sofia so we may really see this happen. In september it won't be too hot so they can play in the afternoon and the Levski and CSKA games could be played in the evening although the police will protest against that. My wild guess is the match will be played in the Litex Staduim in Lovech. It's 200 km from Plovdiv but it's only superhighway between the cities so it takes 3 hrs. to get there. Drwaback is that the stadium is for 10 000 ppl only because Lovech is a small city. Plus for Lovech is that Litex will have an away game at this time so the stadium is free for use.

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: georgie Date: 30-08-2005, 16:57	thanks for the information. The venue of the game has still not been announced by Bolton but it is now rumoured that it will be played in Burgas on the Thursday night. This would be good for me as i would have time to get a bus from sofia on thursday morning. have any of you bulgarian guys heard anything official about the time and date of the game?

Author: Nick
Date: 30-08-2005, 19:26
Edited by: Nick
at: 30-08-2005, 19:52

Loko Plovdiv announced today several things:
1. Game will be played in the Naftex stadium in Burgas. This is good for Bolton fans because they can even spend a day on the beach. At the end of sempember the sea will still be warm enough for a bath

Main reason for the decision were the 3 games in Sofia on Sept.29 and a contract between Loko and the railway company for cheap transport to Burgas for Loko fans. I also guess the police in Sofia refused to guard 3 international games in 1 day

Keep in mind that CSKA and Levski are archrivals and both are not very good with Loko Plovdiv fans. When you add some germans to support Bayer 04, 2000 Bolton fans and some french guys you can get a real explosive situation

You don't have to worry about hostilities though, neither in Sofia nor in Burgas if you don't provoke Loko Plovdiv fans!
! You can get from Sofia to Burgas by bus (takes about 4 hrs) or by plane (45 min). Railway service between Sofia and Burgas is suspended due to the flooding in july! You can also rent a car! It's pretty cheap and most of the road is either superhighway or 1st class national road so by car it takes about 3 hrs.
2. The widow of late Loko Plovdiv president Geoggy Iliev announced today that she will continue to finance the club in the way her dead husband did. This means Loko will probably play 200% against Bolton to strenghen this desition! A GS participation can solve all their financianal problems for at least a year, so they will probably do anything to go win! Coach Enagnosan was in London this weekend to watch Bolton against West Ham. He refused any comments until thursday because of the death of the club owner.

Georgie: I think they made the best choice playing in Burgas! The stadium is new and probably the best or second best in Bulgaria. Burgas is also a nice city at the Black Sea, so i guess you will enjoy your stay. Maybe there will be direct charter flights for Bolton fans! Burgas has an international airport! There are also domestic flights from Sofia to Burgas.

I hope you will have a great time in Bulgaria!

Here you can get an idea of the Loko fans. This is from the game against OFK Belgrade in QR2 played in Burgas:
http://www.lpfc.net/video/beograd/video.wmv

Author: georgie
Date: 30-08-2005, 21:41

thanks for the update nick.

I am a poor man so will get the coach,not the plane,from Sofia to Burgas on Thursday morning i think!!
It is good that the ground is quite big,around 20,000 because there were some much smaller grounds we could have gone to in Europe.
Loko were one of the lowest seeds in the draw but Bolton expect tough matches.We have no experience of Uefa Cup football as a club but some of our players like JJ Okocha,Ivan Campo and Bruno Ngotty have played in Europe with their previous clubs.
It has taken Bolton over 40 years to qualify for Europe so we are hoping to qualify for the group stage and have a few ties this season.
Bolton won at West ham but did not play very well.Our team has a reputation in England for being very strong physically and scoring a lot of goals from headers.I think the loko defence will need to practice heading the ball!
I cannot see there being any crowd trouble...it is a great party for us to be in the Uefa Cup.
I hope many Bulgarians living in England come to the Reebok stadium in Bolton.

Author: Nick
Date: 31-08-2005, 07:57

Bus ticket to Burgas is something like 5-6 Pounds

You will find it really cheap here. A beer costs 30-40 p.

I guess there will be 500 or so Loko fans in Bolton. Most of them will be bulgarians living in England. The fan clubs of CSKA and Levski in London offered support for Loko as far as i know, so some of them will come too. Other than that Loko is also quite unexperienced in Europe. For years Bulgaria had only 3 places in Europe and they were occupied by CSKA, Levski and Litex all the time. AFAIK only 2 or 3 players have played in Europe before with other teams, so it's the same like Bolton

To georgie
Author: delyan Date: 31-08-2005, 15:53	Nick has already given you a very good and comprehensive info...I'd just like to add that there are a plenty of cheap charter flights from England directly to Burgas International Airport - you would probably like to check on that option as well...

Author: spi
Date: 31-08-2005, 17:47

"Litex Staduim in Lovech. It's 200 km from Plovdiv but it's only superhighway between the cities so it takes 3 hrs. to get there. Drwaback is that the stadium is for 10 000 ppl only because Lovech is a small city."

This quote made me wonder: isn't this the Litex-stadium Stadionwelt
? It was said here in Belgium that he Litex-stadion couldn't host more than 6.000 people?

BTW: were there any comments on Genk in Bulgarian media, after the sunday-game? I would expect that there were Litex-scouts at the match?

Author: Nick
Date: 31-08-2005, 18:22
Edited by: Nick
at: 31-08-2005, 18:31

This is the Litex stadium, but the pictures are old. They got some reconstruction last year. The stadium is the same capacity, but got a completely new pitch with heating and some other extras. The official capacity is 9 000 and something.

Same goes for pictures from other bulgarian stadiums btw. On Stadionwelt they all seem to be at least 5 year old. Only from the "Vassil Levski" they seem to be up to date. The "Puma" adverts from the "Bulgarska Armia" were removed at least 5 years ago because CSKA uses other brands of sports equipment

These from Naftex in Burgas are close to the real thing so Georgie can see where Bolton will play. The 2 main stands are covered there:
http://www.stadionwelt.de/stadionwelt_stadien/index.php?template=stadionlisten&
stadion=Neftohimik&foto_ordner=Bulgarien/neftohimik&id=641

Litex scouts were in Belgium of course

They said the usual stuff: Genk is a strong team, but we have our chances. Coach Lubko Petrovic obiously liked what he saw btw! Today he was pretty confident that Litex and CSKA will make it to the UEFA Cup GS. And he is surely not the type of man who will promise unrealistic things just for the sake of the fans.

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: spi Date: 31-08-2005, 19:58	What about the 2 new players he promised? He'll have to be very quick ;-)

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: Nick Date: 31-08-2005, 22:27	Spi: Litex tried 2 new players in a friendly today. I don't know if they signed them Will tell you tomorrow. All I know is that they come from Serbia. Also Litex finally managed to register Milivoe Novakovic for the UEFA Cup. They had some problems with his former club LASK Linz.

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: georgie Date: 01-09-2005, 09:50	The ground in Burgas looks good. A fans group are chartering a plane and having one night at a hotel in Sunny Beach before the match. It is said that Bolton will get 910 match tickets which will be in great demand. One final question....For English fans a match programme is an important souvenir of the game.Would you expect Loko Plovdiv to produce a programme for the Bolton game?

Re: fao Bulgarian fans
Author: Nick Date: 01-09-2005, 17:36	I guess they will do such a thing. At least CSKA prints such programs for important games and i see no reason for Loko not to do it