138-548: Profesionalen Futbolen Klub Botev AD , commonly referred to as Botev Plovdiv ( Bulgarian : Ботев Пловдив , pronounced [ˈbɔtɛf ˈpɫɔvdif] ), or simply Botev (within its associated city), is a Bulgarian professional football club based in Plovdiv . It competes in the Bulgarian Parva Liga , the top flight of Bulgarian football . Founded on 11 March 1912, it is the country's oldest active football club. PFC Botev
276-473: A 1–1 draw in regular time. In June 2021, the establishment of a reserve team, Botev Plovdiv II , was announced. In July 2021, the club was acquired by former Reading Football Club owner Anton Zingarevich . The club won the 2024 Bulgarian Cup final by beating Ludogorets to claim their fourth domestic cup. Botev Plovdiv's kit colours were adopted in August 1917, during a board meeting. The yellow colour represents
414-512: A 2–0 win against Sportist Svoge in the play-offs. In the 2012–13 A Group season, the club showed good performance and finished fourth. Botev Plovdiv was allowed to participate in the 2013–14 UEFA Europa League , taking the place of the then financially struggling CSKA Sofia , this marked the return of the team in Europe, after 18 years of absence. The club defeated the likes of Astana and Zrinjski Mostar , before being eliminated by Stuttgart in
552-532: A consonant and are feminine, as well as nouns that end in –а/–я (most of which are feminine, too) use –та. Nouns that end in –е/–о use –то. The plural definite article is –те for all nouns except for those whose plural form ends in –а/–я; these get –та instead. When postfixed to adjectives the definite articles are –ят/–я for masculine gender (again, with the longer form being reserved for grammatical subjects), –та for feminine gender, –то for neuter gender, and –те for plural. Both groups agree in gender and number with
690-515: A dialect continuum, and there is no well-defined boundary where one language ends and the other begins. Within the limits of the Republic of North Macedonia a strong separate Macedonian identity has emerged since the Second World War, even though there still are a small number of citizens who identify their language as Bulgarian. Beyond the borders of North Macedonia, the situation is more fluid, and
828-495: A friendly match against FC Steaua București won by the yellow-blacks with 3:0. For more than 30 years, no big repairs were done on the college. In 1993, during the presidency of Hristo Danov, some serious repairs were made. The visitors' changing room was moved to the eastern part of the stadium. A tunnel under the East and the North stand was built to connect the visitors' changing room with
966-402: A home-away basis at a total of 30 games per team and played in 30 fixtures. Eight matches are played in every fixture at a total of 240 games played during the first phase. In the second phase, the top six teams form a European qualifying table, while between the 7th and 10th places will battle European Conference League play-off and bottom six teams participate in a relegation group. The winner of
1104-596: A league format since 1948 , when the A Group was established. The champions of the First League have the right to participate in the qualifying rounds of the UEFA Champions League based on the league's European coefficient . Additionally, two UEFA Europa Conference League spots are allocated to the second team in the final standings and the winner of the European playoffs. A further fourth spot may also be granted to
1242-502: A middle ground between the macrodialects. It allows palatalizaton only before central and back vowels and only partial reduction of / a / and / ɔ / . Reduction of / ɛ / , consonant palatalisation before front vowels and depalatalization of palatalized consonants before central and back vowels is strongly discouraged and labelled as provincial. Bulgarian has six vowel phonemes, but at least eight distinct phones can be distinguished when reduced allophones are taken into consideration. There
1380-446: A much smaller group of irregular nouns with zero ending which define tangible objects or concepts ( кръв /krɤf/ 'blood', кост /kɔst/ 'bone', вечер /ˈvɛtʃɛr/ 'evening', нощ /nɔʃt/ 'night'). There are also some commonly used words that end in a vowel and yet are masculine: баща 'father', дядо 'grandfather', чичо / вуйчо 'uncle', and others. The plural forms of the nouns do not express their gender as clearly as
1518-484: A number of phraseological units and sayings. The major exception are vocative forms, which are still in use for masculine (with the endings -е, -о and -ю) and feminine nouns (-[ь/й]о and -е) in the singular. In modern Bulgarian, definiteness is expressed by a definite article which is postfixed to the noun, much like in the Scandinavian languages or Romanian (indefinite: човек , 'person'; definite: човек ът , "
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#17328838952291656-508: A player and manager, succeeded Kostadin Vidolov . The lack of good results, however, saw Hubchev sacked from his position in October 2011. Botev Plovdiv then reached an agreement with a new head coach – Milen Radukanov , who didn't show good results either. Therefore, Kostadin Vidolov returned at the helm of the club and succeeded in gaining promotion to the first level of Bulgarian football , after
1794-524: A special count form in –а/–я , which stems from the Proto-Slavonic dual : два/три стола ('two/three chairs') versus тези столове ('these chairs'); cf. feminine две/три/тези книги ('two/three/these books') and neuter две/три/тези легла ('two/three/these beds'). However, a recently developed language norm requires that count forms should only be used with masculine nouns that do not denote persons. Thus, двама/трима ученици ('two/three students')
1932-460: A total number of 32 games. Depending on their final position in Group A and Group B, two sections will be formed, one for a play-off spot in next season's European competitions and one to avoid relegation. The first two teams from each group continue in the semi-finals, and the last two teams of each group continue to the semi-finals for a relegation match. After this phase, one team is directly relegated to
2070-621: Is " Ye lena Yankovich" ( Йелена Янкович ). Until the period immediately following the Second World War , all Bulgarian and the majority of foreign linguists referred to the South Slavic dialect continuum spanning the area of modern Bulgaria, North Macedonia and parts of Northern Greece as a group of Bulgarian dialects. In contrast, Serbian sources tended to label them "south Serbian" dialects. Some local naming conventions included bolgárski , bugárski and so forth. The codifiers of
2208-621: Is also a significant Bulgarian diaspora abroad. One of the main historically established communities are the Bessarabian Bulgarians , whose settlement in the Bessarabia region of nowadays Moldova and Ukraine dates mostly to the early 19th century. There were 134,000 Bulgarian speakers in Ukraine at the 2001 census, 41,800 in Moldova as of the 2014 census (of which 15,300 were habitual users of
2346-800: Is an Eastern South Slavic language spoken in Southeast Europe , primarily in Bulgaria . It is the language of the Bulgarians . Along with the closely related Macedonian language (collectively forming the East South Slavic languages ), it is a member of the Balkan sprachbund and South Slavic dialect continuum of the Indo-European language family . The two languages have several characteristics that set them apart from all other Slavic languages , including
2484-460: Is an overall record of all match results, points and goals for each team that has participated in the league since its inception in 1948. It also shows every team's number of top three finishes, their best classification, debut season and current spell in Parva Liga, or the season they were last part of the championship. The table is accurate as of the end of the 2022–23 season. In order to put
2622-488: Is based on a general consensus reached by all major Bulgarian linguists in the 1930s and 1940s. In turn, the 39-consonant model was launched in the beginning of the 1950s under the influence of the ideas of Russian linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy . Despite frequent objections, the support of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has ensured Trubetzkoy's model virtual monopoly in state-issued phonologies and grammars since
2760-433: Is common in all modern Slavic languages (e.g. Czech medv ě d /ˈmɛdvjɛt/ "bear", Polish p ię ć /pʲɛ̃tɕ/ "five", Serbo-Croatian je len /jělen/ "deer", Ukrainian нема є /nemájɛ/ "there is not ...", Macedonian пишува ње /piʃuvaɲʲɛ/ "writing", etc.), as well as some Western Bulgarian dialectal forms – e.g. ора̀н’е /oˈraɲʲɛ/ (standard Bulgarian: оране /oˈranɛ/ , "ploughing"), however it
2898-473: Is contested between the two most successful and most popular football clubs in Bulgaria, CSKA Sofia and Levski Sofia . The Plovdiv derby is contested between Botev and Lokomotiv . For the start of the new 2012–13 season, the football clubs rejected requests from four TV stations due to the low payments being offered – Bulgarian National Television , Nova Television , TV7 and TV+ . Finally after
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#17328838952293036-405: Is currently no consensus on the number of Bulgarian consonants, with one school of thought advocating for the existence of only 22 consonant phonemes and another one claiming that there are not fewer than 39 consonant phonemes. The main bone of contention is how to treat palatalized consonants : as separate phonemes or as allophones of their respective plain counterparts. The 22-consonant model
3174-800: Is mainly split into two broad dialect areas, based on the different reflexes of the Proto-Slavic yat vowel (Ѣ). This split, which occurred at some point during the Middle Ages, led to the development of Bulgaria's: The literary language norm, which is generally based on the Eastern dialects, also has the Eastern alternating reflex of yat . However, it has not incorporated the general Eastern umlaut of all synchronic or even historic "ya" sounds into "e" before front vowels – e.g. поляна ( polyana ) vs. полени ( poleni ) "meadow – meadows" or even жаба ( zhaba ) vs. жеби ( zhebi ) "frog – frogs", even though it co-occurs with
3312-518: Is named after the Bulgarian poet, revolutionary and national hero – Hristo Botev . The club plays its home games at Hristo Botev Stadium . Throughout its history, the club has won 2 national titles , 4 national cups , 1 supercup and 1 Balkans Cup . Botev has also reached the Cup Winners' Cup quarter-finals once. In addition, the club has been a runner-up in the domestic league twice and has reached
3450-471: Is not represented in standard Bulgarian speech or writing. Even where /jɛ/ occurs in other Slavic words, in Standard Bulgarian it is usually transcribed and pronounced as pure /ɛ/ – e.g. Boris Yeltsin is "Eltsin" ( Борис Елцин ), Yekaterinburg is "Ekaterinburg" ( Екатеринбург ) and Sarajevo is "Saraevo" ( Сараево ), although – because of the stress and the beginning of the word – Jelena Janković
3588-478: Is one more to describe a general category of unwitnessed events – the inferential (преизказно /prɛˈiskɐzno/ ) mood. However, most contemporary Bulgarian linguists usually exclude the subjunctive mood and the inferential mood from the list of Bulgarian moods (thus placing the number of Bulgarian moods at a total of 3: indicative, imperative and conditional) and do not consider them to be moods but view them as verbial morphosyntactic constructs or separate gramemes of
3726-401: Is perceived as more correct than двама/трима ученика , while the distinction is retained in cases such as два/три молива ('two/three pencils') versus тези моливи ('these pencils'). Cases exist only in the personal and some other pronouns (as they do in many other modern Indo-European languages ), with nominative , accusative , dative and vocative forms. Vestiges are present in
3864-418: Is that mutable parts of speech vary grammatically, whereas the immutable ones do not change, regardless of their use. The five classes of mutables are: nouns , adjectives , numerals , pronouns and verbs . Syntactically, the first four of these form the group of the noun or the nominal group. The immutables are: adverbs , prepositions , conjunctions , particles and interjections . Verbs and adverbs form
4002-629: Is the Service of Saint Cyril from Skopje (Скопски миней), a 13th-century Middle Bulgarian manuscript from northern Macedonia according to which St. Cyril preached with "Bulgarian" books among the Moravian Slavs. The first mention of the language as the "Bulgarian language" instead of the "Slavonic language" comes in the work of the Greek clergy of the Archbishopric of Ohrid in the 11th century, for example in
4140-399: Is used, and the choice between them is partly determined by their ending in singular and partly influenced by gender; in addition, irregular declension and alternative plural forms are common. Words ending in –а/–я (which are usually feminine) generally have the plural ending –и , upon dropping of the singular ending. Of nouns ending in a consonant, the feminine ones also use –и , whereas
4278-436: The 2015 UEFA European Under-17 Championship . The reconstruction will be carried out in two phases, the first starting from the end of March 2012 and will last four months. The first stage consists in the replacement of the field, which will have modern drainage system and heating system . The field will be measuring 68x105 meters. Second stage consists of the demolishing of the four old tribunes and building of new ones closer to
Botev Plovdiv - Misplaced Pages Continue
4416-425: The 2022–23 season . The three phases were kept identical though, with the exception being that six teams would compete in the relegation group instead of four. For the 2024–25 season, the format was modified yet again. After the regular season concludes, the league would split into a top four group to determine the champion and European competition places, a second group for teams ranked fifth through eight to determine
4554-537: The Balkan language area (mostly grammatically) and later also by Turkish , which was the official language of the Ottoman Empire , in the form of the Ottoman Turkish language , mostly lexically. The damaskin texts mark the transition from Middle Bulgarian to New Bulgarian, which was standardized in the 19th century. As a national revival occurred toward the end of the period of Ottoman rule (mostly during
4692-581: The Bulgarian Cup final thirteen times. In the years before the Bulgarian championship was created, the team regularly participated in the local Plovdiv championship, claiming it six times. It is one of the most popular clubs in Bulgaria. The club was founded on 11 March 1912 as Hristo Botyov - Futbolno druzhestvo (meaning "Hristo Botyov - Football Association") in Plovdiv by 22 students from Saint Augustine's French College and First Boys High School. The name
4830-679: The Bulgarian Empire introduced the Glagolitic alphabet which was devised by the Saints Cyril and Methodius in the 850s. The Glagolitic alphabet was gradually superseded in later centuries by the Cyrillic script , developed around the Preslav Literary School , Bulgaria in the late 9th century. Several Cyrillic alphabets with 28 to 44 letters were used in the beginning and the middle of
4968-558: The Greek hagiography of Clement of Ohrid by Theophylact of Ohrid (late 11th century). During the Middle Bulgarian period, the language underwent dramatic changes, losing the Slavonic case system , but preserving the rich verb system (while the development was exactly the opposite in other Slavic languages) and developing a definite article. It was influenced by its non-Slavic neighbors in
5106-572: The Second League and the remaining two teams will compete in two relegation matches against the second and the third ranked clubs from the Second League. In case of a tie on points between two or more clubs, tiebreakers are applied in the following order: Bold indicates clubs which play in the 2024–25 First League . [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Notes : The all-time Parva Liga table
5244-509: The UEFA Champions League second qualifying round. The team that ranks second is awarded with a place in the UEFA Europa League qualifying rounds. The third team in the final standings would participate in a play-off match against a representative team from the bottom eight. Depending on the winner of the Bulgarian Cup final, a possible fourth team from the first six may compete in a play-off match for an UEFA Europa League spot instead of
5382-779: The accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union , following the Latin and Greek scripts . Bulgarian possesses a phonology similar to that of the rest of the South Slavic languages, notably lacking Serbo-Croatian's phonemic vowel length and tones and alveo-palatal affricates. There is a general dichotomy between Eastern and Western dialects, with Eastern ones featuring consonant palatalization before front vowels ( / ɛ / and / i / ) and substantial vowel reduction of
5520-568: The efbet League for sponsorship reasons), is a professional association football league, being the top tier of Bulgarian football league system . Contested by 16 teams, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the Second Professional Football League . The Bulgarian football championship was inaugurated in 1924 as the Bulgarian State Football Championship and has been played in
5658-445: The person") or to the first nominal constituent of definite noun phrases (indefinite: добър човек , 'a good person'; definite: добри ят човек , " the good person"). There are four singular definite articles. Again, the choice between them is largely determined by the noun's ending in the singular. Nouns that end in a consonant and are masculine use –ът/–ят, when they are grammatical subjects , and –а/–я elsewhere. Nouns that end in
Botev Plovdiv - Misplaced Pages Continue
5796-450: The third qualifying round . In 2013–14 , Botev Plovdiv finished fourth once more and also reached the 2013–14 Bulgarian Cup final, where they lost 0–1 to Ludogorets Razgrad . The club faced the same opponents in the 2014 Bulgarian Supercup match, which was lost 1–3. On the European front, the team participated in 2014–15 UEFA Europa League , where they managed to eliminate Libertas , before losing to St. Pölten . The following seasons,
5934-623: The " Big Excursion " of 1989. The language is also represented among the diaspora in Western Europe and North America, which has been steadily growing since the 1990s. Countries with significant numbers of speakers include Germany , Spain , Italy , the United Kingdom (38,500 speakers in England and Wales as of 2011), France , the United States , and Canada (19,100 in 2011). The language
6072-549: The 1960s. However, its reception abroad has been lukewarm, with a number of authors either calling the model into question or outright rejecting it. Thus, the Handbook of the International Phonetic Association only lists 22 consonants in Bulgarian's consonant inventory . The parts of speech in Bulgarian are divided in ten types, which are categorized in two broad classes: mutable and immutable. The difference
6210-460: The 19th century during the efforts on the codification of Modern Bulgarian until an alphabet with 32 letters, proposed by Marin Drinov , gained prominence in the 1870s. The alphabet of Marin Drinov was used until the orthographic reform of 1945, when the letters yat (uppercase Ѣ, lowercase ѣ) and yus (uppercase Ѫ, lowercase ѫ) were removed from its alphabet, reducing the number of letters to 30. With
6348-461: The 19th century), a modern Bulgarian literary language gradually emerged that drew heavily on Church Slavonic/Old Bulgarian (and to some extent on literary Russian , which had preserved many lexical items from Church Slavonic) and later reduced the number of Turkish and other Balkan loans. Today one difference between Bulgarian dialects in the country and literary spoken Bulgarian is the significant presence of Old Bulgarian words and even word forms in
6486-528: The 2003/04 season (when Lokomotiv won the A PFG for the first time). Spartak Plovdiv also used the stadium for several matches during the 1995/1996 season. The stadium has also hosted the Bulgarian Cup final in 2000, when Levski Sofia won the cup after 2:0 against Naftex Burgas . In the summer of 2008, the stadium underwent renovations to meet the requirements of the Football Union, the Central Stand
6624-456: The A PFG. Botev spent one season in the second division and quickly returned to the top flight, but in 2004 the club was relegated for the second time. From 2005 to 2009 the club played in the A PFG , but in the second part of the league table. In September 2009 , Botev Plovdiv set an unusual record after fielding seven Italian players in the 1–2 away loss against Litex Lovech , becoming the first A PFG club to feature that many foreigners from
6762-562: The Botev's second highest scorer with 106 goals and third is Atanas Pashev with 100 goals. Under the leadership of Dinko Dermendzhiev , Botev won their first Bulgarian Cup in 1962, beating Dunav Rousse 3–0 at Vasil Levski National Stadium in Sofia on 12 August. In the 1962–63 season Botev reached the quarter-final of the Cup Winners' Cup by eliminating Steaua București and Shamrock Rovers before losing to Atlético Madrid 1–5 on aggregate. In
6900-612: The Nova Broadcasting Group channels Diema, Diema Sport and Diema Sport 2 , part of the Diema Extra paid pack, as their contract with the league was additionally extended. Until 2011 the official sponsor of the championship was TBI Credit and the league was officially known as TBI A Football Group . In 2011–12 , A Group had a new sponsor, the Victoria FATA Insurance, and therefore the league name in that season
7038-516: The Plovdiv Canaries. The club's ultras are known as Bultras . Botev's eternal rival is the neighbouring city club of Lokomotiv Plovdiv , and both form the local Plovdiv derby . The two teams are the most supported ones in the second largest city in Bulgaria ;– Plovdiv – and the matches between them are well known to the Bulgarian football community, and also considered to be one of
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#17328838952297176-490: The Second League. Starting from the 2022–23 season, a new league format was approved by the Bulgarian Football Union , in an attempt to improve each participating club's competitiveness, match attendance and performance in the league. It involves 16 teams playing in two phases, a regular season and playoffs. The first phase includes each club competing against every other team twice in a double round-robin system, on
7314-529: The assets of the clubs. The table below does not reflect the tables provided by official sources, including the Bulgarian Football Union. In general, the table presented below considers clubs bearing similar names and from the same city to be the same entity, and not separate clubs, whereas the Bulgarian Football Union considers the foundation of a new club to be a separate entity and records are kept separately. The Eternal Derby of Bulgarian football
7452-458: The autumn of 1948 . The ten teams participating in the league were Levski , Septemvri , Lokomotiv , Slavia and Spartak from the capital city Sofia , and Botev Varna , Botev Burgas , Slavia Plovdiv , Marek Stanke Dimitrov , Benkovski in a spring-autumn cycle like in the Soviet Union . In the autumn of 1949, qualification tournaments were played to determine the teams that would play in
7590-415: The blood of the heroes, the pureness of the souls, and Bulgaria's fertility. The shield is a symbol of the brave while the infinite circle suggests eternity. Botev Plovdiv's motto is Krasota, vyara i borba ( Bulgarian : Красота, вяра и борба , pronounced [crɐsɔtɐ, vʝarɐ i bɔrbɐ] , meaning Beauty, faith and fight ). In 1959, the authorities allowed the construction of a new club stadium at
7728-438: The club easily won promotion for the top division. 1956 was very successful for the team, which finished 3rd in the domestic league and qualified for the final of the Bulgarian Cup , where Botev faced Levski Sofia . The final match was lost by the canaries with 2–5. In the next few years, the local municipality decided to build a new venue for the sports club. The construction for the sports complex, started on July 21, 1959, and
7866-502: The club frequently secured places in the middle of the table. On 24 May 2017, Botev Plovdiv won their 3rd Bulgarian cup title in a 2–1 win against Ludogorets Razgrad , by doing so the club secured a spot in the 2017–18 UEFA Europa League , where they met Partizani Tirana and Beitar Jerusalem , before being knocked out by Marítimo in the third qualifying round . On 9 August 2017, the club won its first Bulgarian Supercup title , beating Ludogorets Razgrad 5–4 on penalties, following
8004-510: The club's founders from Saint Augustine 's Catholic College and Thrace 's golden grain fields, while the black colour symbolises the black earth of the fertile soil as well as the Orthodoxy of the club's other founders from First Boys High School. A following board meeting, held in September 1917, replaced the club's crest, which was an encircled Cyrillic letter "Б", an abbreviation for "Ботевъ",
8142-469: The club's full name. The new approved crest (used today) was a red circle, with a green rectangle situated centrally above, with the name of the club inscribed inside. Above the rectangle was a yellow and black striped shield, while the club's year of establishment was displayed underneath it. The crests' white, green and red colours embody the tricolour of the Kingdom of Bulgaria . Simultaneously, they symbolise
8280-452: The club's most important player Dinko Dermendzhiev and the beginning of Botev's golden age. Dermendzhiev holds Botev's overall appearances record, playing in 447 matches for the club. Second is Viden Apostolov with 429 matches and third is Petar Zehtinski with 351. Botev's all-time leading scorer is also Dermendzhiev , who scored 194 goals at his period in the club. Kostadin Kostadinov is
8418-536: The club's supporters * Retired until the player is actively playing and decides to return. Had international caps for their respective countries, held any club record, or have more than 100 league appearance. Players whose name is listed in bold represented their countries. Bulgarian language Rup Moesian Bulgarian ( / b ʌ l ˈ ɡ ɛər i ə n / , / b ʊ l ˈ -/ bu(u)l- GAIR -ee-ən ; български език , bŭlgarski ezik , pronounced [ˈbɤɫɡɐrski] )
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#17328838952298556-401: The clubs. The new league name also came with a new format change, the fourth such in the last four seasons. A total of 14 teams would compete, and the season would consist of two phases, a regular season phase, where each team plays each other team twice, followed by a playoff phase, where the top six teams from the regular season compete for the title as well as European competition spots, while
8694-603: The competition has been dominated by Sofia -based teams. Together they have won a total number of 70 titles. The first football championship in Bulgaria was held in 1924 as a knockout tournament . It was organised by the Bulgarian National Sports Federation (BNSF). The six inaugural teams were Vladislav Varna , Orel Vratsa , Levski Sofia , Krakra Pernik , Pobeda Plovdiv and Chernomorets Burgas , each having won and representing its regional sports federation, called sportna federatsiya . The championship
8832-412: The completion of the action of the verb and form past perfective (aorist) forms; imperfective ones are neutral with regard to it and form past imperfective forms. Most Bulgarian verbs can be grouped in perfective-imperfective pairs (imperfective/perfective: идвам/дойда "come", пристигам/пристигна "arrive"). Perfective verbs can be usually formed from imperfective ones by suffixation or prefixation, but
8970-549: The eastern dialects prevailed, and in 1899 the Bulgarian Ministry of Education officially codified a standard Bulgarian language based on the Drinov-Ivanchev orthography. Bulgarian is the official language of Bulgaria , where it is used in all spheres of public life. As of 2011, it is spoken as a first language by about 6 million people in the country, or about four out of every five Bulgarian citizens. There
9108-439: The elimination of case declension , the development of a suffixed definite article , and the lack of a verb infinitive . They retain and have further developed the Proto-Slavic verb system (albeit analytically). One such major development is the innovation of evidential verb forms to encode for the source of information: witnessed, inferred, or reported. It is the official language of Bulgaria , and since 2007 has been among
9246-466: The famous "Wonderteam" of Austria Vienna (sensational win with 5:4) respectively. The attendance record was set on February 27, 1963, during the quarter-final of the Cup Winner's Cup against Atlético Madrid (1:1) – 40,000 people. The record for the Bulgarian championship was set in 1966 against Levski Sofia (0:1) – 37,000 people, but because of the riots between the fans and the rush of fans on
9384-431: The field and the capacity of the stadium was reduced. In 1995 electric lighting was put in, but ironically it did not reach the standards of the Bulgarian Football Union . In the years from 1926 to 1947, Botev played six international games on the ground – two wins, three losses and one draw. The matches were played against Admira Vienna (1:7), Kecskemét (3:2 and 2:4), Beşiktaş (0:0), Bohemians Prague (1:3) and
9522-465: The field, Botev Plovdiv was forced to play its derbies at "The Big House" – the City Stadium . Several times, the stadium was used for football matches from the city rivals from Lokomotiv Plovdiv . During the second half of the 1980/81 season, "The Smurfs" (Lokomotiv Plovdiv) played their home matches on The college (which was followed by a relegation in the second division) as well as one match in
9660-417: The fiercest rivalries in the world. Botev is the country's oldest continuously existing team, whereas Lokomotiv grew popular fanbase in the 70s. Traditionally, Lokomotiv's team drew support from the lower working class of society, whereas Botev's fanbase consisted mainly of the middle and upper classes, although that no longer applies. Botev's regional cross-city rival is Beroe Stara Zagora . The match between
9798-497: The first foreign player in the club's history, the Hungarian Roberto Szabay. These big investments however did not bring any significant results and the club only reached third place in the A PFG in 1993, 1994 and 1995. On 19 March 1999 Botev was acquired by Dimitar Hristolov. This day marked the beginning of difficult years for the club. In the 2000–01 season, the team was relegated to B PFG , after playing 47 years in
9936-701: The first round to Rapid București after 2–0 win in Plovdiv and 0–3 (a.e.t.) loss in Romania. A few years later, in 1981, the team became runners up of the Balkans Cup for the first time, playing against Yugoslavian Velež Mostar after two spectacular final matches to finish second In 1981, the club's forward Georgi Slavkov won the club's highest individual achievement, the European Golden Shoe after finishing as Europe's top domestic scorer with 31 goals. The same year,
10074-409: The first set of fixtures, the satellite broadcaster Bulsatcom with its channel TV+ bought the rights, along with BNT . Before the start of the spring half-season the rights were bought by TV7 and News7 , who had rights for the first, third and fourth pick, and BNT 1 along with the international channel BNT World broadcasting the second pick of a match. The next seasons will also be broadcast on
10212-547: The first team in the Bulgarian First League , however only five non-EU nationals can be used during a match day. Those non-EU nationals with European ancestry can claim citizenship from the nation their ancestors came from. If a player does not have European ancestry he can claim Bulgarian citizenship after playing in Bulgaria for 5 years. EU Nationals EU Nationals (Dual citizenship) Non-EU Nationals 8 * – Todor Nedelev 12 – Dedicated to
10350-406: The following two years as well as in 1937 and 1940, Botev won the urban championship. The club's name has been changed for political reasons several times: Botev (1912–1946), DNV (1947–51), DNA (1952–57), SKNA (1957), Botev (1957–1968) and Trakia (1968–1989). In 1951, Botev Plovdiv joined the newly created Bulgarian A PFG . Despite being relegated in 1953 to the Bulgarian B PFG , in 1954
10488-454: The football field. On home matchdays, Botev Plovdiv's players traditionally enter the pitch to the Blue Canary tune (by Marisa Fiordaliso and Carlo Buti ) before the start of a game. Botev Plovdiv has maintained a strong fan base over the years and in terms of the popularity is staged as the third most supported club in Bulgaria. There is no unique umbrella organization embracing all fans of
10626-686: The fourth placed team in the final league ranking, given that the Bulgarian Cup holder has finished among the top three teams at the end of the season. A total of 75 clubs have competed in the Bulgarian top-tier since its establishment, with FC Krumovgrad being the newest member of the top tier, after promotion in 2023. Since 1948 , eleven different teams have been crowned champions of Bulgaria. The three most successful clubs are CSKA Sofia with 31 titles, Levski Sofia with 26 titles and Ludogorets Razgrad with 13 titles. The current champions Ludogorets Razgrad won their twelfth consecutive title in their twelfth First League season in 2022–23 . Historically,
10764-539: The group of the verb or the verbal group. Nouns and adjectives have the categories grammatical gender , number , case (only vocative ) and definiteness in Bulgarian. Adjectives and adjectival pronouns agree with nouns in number and gender. Pronouns have gender and number and retain (as in nearly all Indo-European languages ) a more significant part of the case system. There are three grammatical genders in Bulgarian: masculine , feminine and neuter . The gender of
10902-484: The historical yat vowel or at least root vowels displaying the ya – e alternation. The letter was used in each occurrence of such a root, regardless of the actual pronunciation of the vowel: thus, both ml ya ko and ml e kar were spelled with (Ѣ). Among other things, this was seen as a way to "reconcile" the Western and the Eastern dialects and maintain language unity at a time when much of Bulgaria's Western dialect area
11040-706: The language), and presumably a significant proportion of the 13,200 ethnic Bulgarians residing in neighbouring Transnistria in 2016. Another community abroad are the Banat Bulgarians , who migrated in the 17th century to the Banat region now split between Romania, Serbia and Hungary. They speak the Banat Bulgarian dialect , which has had its own written standard and a historically important literary tradition. There are Bulgarian speakers in neighbouring countries as well. The regional dialects of Bulgarian and Macedonian form
11178-571: The language, but its pronunciation is in many respects a compromise between East and West Bulgarian (see especially the phonetic sections below). Following the efforts of some figures of the National awakening of Bulgaria (most notably Neofit Rilski and Ivan Bogorov ), there had been many attempts to codify a standard Bulgarian language; however, there was much argument surrounding the choice of norms. Between 1835 and 1878 more than 25 proposals were put forward and "linguistic chaos" ensued. Eventually
11316-469: The last two teams were directly relegated to the lower division and the team that finished 12th had the chance to compete in the promotion/relegation play-off for the remaining place in the league. Levski Sofia became champions in the first season of the Premier League. In the 2001/02 season there was experimentation with the regulations. The championship was divided into two phases. In the first phase
11454-409: The latter. Russian loans are distinguished from Old Bulgarian ones on the basis of the presence of specifically Russian phonetic changes, as in оборот (turnover, rev), непонятен (incomprehensible), ядро (nucleus) and others. Many other loans from French, English and the classical languages have subsequently entered the language as well. Modern Bulgarian was based essentially on the Eastern dialects of
11592-415: The league was again going to be played in the autumn-spring format . Despite the fact that the teams had played just 1 match, CDNA was crowned as the champion of Bulgaria. The frequent changes in the number of teams in A Group continued in the 1960s. In the first two seasons after the reforms in 1958, the number of teams in the league was 12, in the period 1960–1962 – 14, until season 1967/68 , when
11730-694: The league's name has been A Football Group . In 2007–08 , CSKA became champions of A Group for a record-breaking 31st time without a loss out of 30 matches. But in the summer, UEFA didn't give a licence for the club to play in the UEFA Champions League qualifying rounds and Levski Sofia entered to play in the tournament instead of CSKA. In the following season Levski Sofia won their last A Group title, finishing one point ahead of CSKA. Later on, two consecutive seasons Litex Lovech won another two titles like in 1997–98 and 1998–99 . In 2011–12 , after winning promotion from B Group , Ludogorets Razgrad became
11868-473: The literary norm regarding the yat vowel, many people living in Western Bulgaria, including the capital Sofia , will fail to observe its rules. While the norm requires the realizations vidyal vs. videli (he has seen; they have seen), some natives of Western Bulgaria will preserve their local dialect pronunciation with "e" for all instances of "yat" (e.g. videl , videli ). Others, attempting to adhere to
12006-470: The low vowels / ɛ / , / ɔ / and / a / in unstressed position, sometimes leading to neutralisation between / ɛ / and / i / , / ɔ / and / u / , and / a / and / ɤ / . Both patterns have partial parallels in Russian, leading to partially similar sounds. In turn, the Western dialects generally do not have any allophonic palatalization and exhibit minor, if any, vowel reduction. Standard Bulgarian keeps
12144-399: The masculine ones usually have –и for polysyllables and –ове for monosyllables (however, exceptions are especially common in this group). Nouns ending in –о/–е (most of which are neuter) mostly use the suffixes –а, –я (both of which require the dropping of the singular endings) and –та . With cardinal numbers and related words such as няколко ('several'), masculine nouns use
12282-424: The merger was creating a team which would gather the best players in the city and contend with Sofia-based teams. However, only two players from recent rivals Spartak had joined the team. The championship team featured several notable players, such as Viden Apostolov, Georgi Popov and Rayko Stoynov , with Vasil Spasov as head coach. Botev represented Bulgaria in the 1967–68 European Champions Cup where they lost in
12420-477: The most significant exception from the above are the relatively numerous nouns that end in a consonant and yet are feminine: these comprise, firstly, a large group of nouns with zero ending expressing quality, degree or an abstraction, including all nouns ending on –ост/–ест -{ost/est} ( мъдрост /ˈmɤdrost/ 'wisdom', низост /ˈnizost/ 'vileness', прелест /ˈprɛlɛst/ 'loveliness', болест /ˈbɔlɛst/ 'sickness', любов /ljuˈbɔf/ 'love'), and secondly,
12558-557: The newspaper Makedoniya : "Such an artificial assembly of written language is something impossible, unattainable and never heard of." After 1944 the People's Republic of Bulgaria and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia began a policy of making Macedonia into the connecting link for the establishment of a new Balkan Federative Republic and stimulating here a development of distinct Macedonian consciousness. With
12696-455: The next 1950 season. In the next two seasons the number of teams in the league was increased to 12, and for the 1953 season there were 15 teams (the 16th team was the Bulgaria national team ). In seasons 1954 and 1955 there were 14 teams in the league, and in seasons 1956 and 1957 there were 10. In 1958 , the championship was again stopped after the spring half-season, as had happened in 1948 . New re-organizations were accepted and
12834-411: The next day, Monday, March 12. Presently club fans celebrate the later date as a birthday. In 1920, some members of the association split and founded a new football club, named Rekord . However, this did not deter Botev from winning the first unofficial urban championship. On 30 August 1925, Botev lost 2–6 to Turkish side Fenerbahçe , in its first international match. The following year, the team led by
12972-447: The norm, will actually use the "ya" sound even in cases where the standard language has "e" (e.g. vidyal , vidyali ). The latter hypercorrection is called свръхякане ( svrah-yakane ≈"over- ya -ing"). Bulgarian is the only Slavic language whose literary standard does not naturally contain the iotated e /jɛ/ (or its variant, e after a palatalized consonant /ʲɛ/ , except in non-Slavic foreign-loaned words). This sound combination
13110-659: The noun can largely be inferred from its ending: nouns ending in a consonant ("zero ending") are generally masculine (for example, град /ɡrat/ 'city', син /sin/ 'son', мъж /mɤʃ/ 'man'; those ending in –а/–я (-a/-ya) ( жена /ʒɛˈna/ 'woman', дъщеря /dɐʃtɛrˈja/ 'daughter', улица /ˈulitsɐ/ 'street') are normally feminine; and nouns ending in –е, –о are almost always neuter ( дете /dɛˈtɛ/ 'child', езеро /ˈɛzɛro/ 'lake'), as are those rare words (usually loanwords) that end in –и, –у, and –ю ( цунами /tsuˈnami/ ' tsunami ', табу /tɐˈbu/ 'taboo', меню /mɛˈnju/ 'menu'). Perhaps
13248-994: The noun they are appended to. They may also take the definite article as explained above. Pronouns may vary in gender, number, and definiteness, and are the only parts of speech that have retained case inflections. Three cases are exhibited by some groups of pronouns – nominative, accusative and dative. The distinguishable types of pronouns include the following: personal, relative, reflexive, interrogative, negative, indefinitive, summative and possessive. A Bulgarian verb has many distinct forms, as it varies in person, number, voice, aspect, mood, tense and in some cases gender. Finite verbal forms are simple or compound and agree with subjects in person (first, second and third) and number (singular, plural). In addition to that, past compound forms using participles vary in gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and voice (active and passive) as well as aspect (perfective/aorist and imperfective). Bulgarian verbs express lexical aspect : perfective verbs signify
13386-466: The official languages of the European Union . It is also spoken by the Bulgarian historical communities in North Macedonia , Ukraine , Moldova , Serbia , Romania , Hungary , Albania and Greece . One can divide the development of the Bulgarian language into several periods. Bulgarian was the first Slavic language attested in writing. As Slavic linguistic unity lasted into late antiquity,
13524-466: The oldest manuscripts initially referred to this language as ѧзꙑкъ словѣньскъ, "the Slavic language". In the Middle Bulgarian period this name was gradually replaced by the name ѧзꙑкъ блъгарьскъ, the "Bulgarian language". In some cases, this name was used not only with regard to the contemporary Middle Bulgarian language of the copyist but also to the period of Old Bulgarian. A most notable example of anachronism
13662-429: The past pluperfect subjunctive. Perfect constructions use a single auxiliary "be". The traditional interpretation is that in addition to the four moods (наклонения /nəkloˈnɛnijɐ/ ) shared by most other European languages – indicative (изявително, /izʲəˈvitɛɫno/ ) imperative (повелително /poveˈlitelno/ ), subjunctive ( подчинително /pottʃiˈnitɛɫno/ ) and conditional (условно, /oˈsɫɔvno/ ) – in Bulgarian there
13800-422: The place of the old field in the neighborhood of Kamenitza. The first building works began on 21 July 1959. Two years later, Botev Plovdiv returned to The college. On May 14, 1961, the reconstructed stadium was inaugurated. The prime minister – Anton Yugov – attended the celebrations together with the deputy-minister of the defence Dobri Djurov and most of the communist leaders. The celebrations ended with
13938-535: The playing coach and captain – Nikola Shterev , won the Plovdiv Cup. Botev won its first national title in 1929 , defeating Levski Sofia 1–0 in the final, with Nikola Shterev scoring the winning goal. The club became the first from Plovdiv to win the Bulgarian Championship . Notable players from the period include Stancho Prodanov, Vangel Kaundzhiev and Mihail Kostov, who played for the national team . In
14076-591: The pockets of speakers of the related regional dialects in Albania and in Greece variously identify their language as Macedonian or as Bulgarian. In Serbia , there were 13,300 speakers as of 2011, mainly concentrated in the so-called Western Outlands along the border with Bulgaria. Bulgarian is also spoken in Turkey: natively by Pomaks , and as a second language by many Bulgarian Turks who emigrated from Bulgaria, mostly during
14214-685: The proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Macedonia as part of the Yugoslav federation, the new authorities also started measures that would overcome the pro-Bulgarian feeling among parts of its population and in 1945 a separate Macedonian language was codified. After 1958, when the pressure from Moscow decreased, Sofia reverted to the view that the Macedonian language did not exist as a separate language. Nowadays, Bulgarian and Greek linguists, as well as some linguists from other countries, still consider
14352-569: The rank and file of the notable Golden Team. An important achievement of that period was the 1985 Cup Winners' Cup campaign , when Botev qualified for the second round of the tournament. The team secured a 2–0 victory against the German powerhouse Bayern Munich (with Klaus Augenthaler , Dieter Hoeneß , Søren Lerby , Lothar Matthäus and Jean-Marie Pfaff in their squad). On November 7, 1984, in front of more than 45,000 spectators at Plovdiv Stadium , Atanas Pashev and Kostadin Kostadinov scored for
14490-411: The regular season standings. The teams that enter Group A are the 7th, 10th, 11th and the 14th, and the teams that participate in Group B are the 8th, 9th, 12th and the 13th. Every participant plays twice against the other three teams in their group on a home-away basis. The teams from the bottom eight also compete with the results from the regular season. After the group stages, every team will have played
14628-458: The remaining eight teams would compete for avoiding relegation to the Second League. This format was used from 2016 up until 2021. In 2021, the BFU decided to once more change the format of the league. This time, the league would still consist of a regular season stage where teams compete against each other twice, but then the league would split into three phases. The top six clubs would again compete for
14766-466: The resultant verb often deviates in meaning from the original. In the pair examples above, aspect is stem-specific and therefore there is no difference in meaning. In Bulgarian, there is also grammatical aspect . Three grammatical aspects are distinguishable: neutral, perfect and pluperfect. The neutral aspect comprises the three simple tenses and the future tense. The pluperfect is manifest in tenses that use double or triple auxiliary "be" participles like
14904-526: The same nationality. On 24 February 2010, Botev Plovdiv were administratively relegated from A PFG due to financial difficulties. Botev's opponents were awarded 3–0 wins by default during the second half of the season. Following the financial collapse in 2010, Botev Plovdiv were relegated to the third level of Bulgarian football, the amateur V Group for the 2010–11 season. The club was completely rebuilt on an administrative level, several Bulgarian players with first league and international experience helped
15042-433: The same season the team finished runners-up in A PFG with 40 points, only 3 less than the first, Spartak Plovdiv . The club claimed its second national title in 1967 . A few days later, political authorities merged two local clubs with Botev – Spartak and Akademik , creating Trakia . The "new" club, continued playing its games on Hristo Botev Stadium and kept its players, colours, history and fans. The reasoning behind
15180-399: The second team after Litex to win the A Group in their first season. The Bulgarian Football Union made some changes in the format of A Group prior to season 2013–14 with the reduction of the number of the teams participating in the top league from 16 to 14 and the reintroduction of the two phase league with a regular season and a playoff/play out phase. For the 2014–15 season , the league
15318-520: The singular ones, but may also provide some clues to it: the ending –и (-i) is more likely to be used with a masculine or feminine noun ( факти /ˈfakti/ 'facts', болести /ˈbɔlɛsti/ 'sicknesses'), while one in –а/–я belongs more often to a neuter noun ( езера /ɛzɛˈra/ 'lakes'). Also, the plural ending –ове /ovɛ/ occurs only in masculine nouns. Two numbers are distinguished in Bulgarian– singular and plural . A variety of plural suffixes
15456-428: The standard Bulgarian language, however, did not wish to make any allowances for a pluricentric "Bulgaro-Macedonian" compromise. In 1870 Marin Drinov , who played a decisive role in the standardization of the Bulgarian language, rejected the proposal of Parteniy Zografski and Kuzman Shapkarev for a mixed eastern and western Bulgarian/Macedonian foundation of the standard Bulgarian language, stating in his article in
15594-468: The team return to B Group , such as striker Atanas Kurdov , midfielder Todor Timonov , captain Nikolay Manchev , and goalkeeper Armen Ambartsumyan . The club went unbeaten and won their regional third league, and thus gained promotion to the second level of Bulgarian football . A new coach was hired for the 2011–12 B Group season. Petar Houbchev , who had previous international experience both as
15732-401: The team that would compete in the playoffs for UEFA Conference League (team that finished fourth in the top group would play against the fifth-placed team), as well as a bottom eight group consisting of teams competing to avoid relegation, with the last two teams being directly relegated, while the 14th and 15th placed teams would compete in a playoff against the third and fourth placed teams from
15870-626: The team won its second Bulgarian Cup , after a win against Pirin Blagoevgrad . This period was very successful for the club. Botev finished 3rd in the A PFG , in 1981 , 1983 , 1985 , 1987 , 1988 and 2nd in 1986 . In this year the team finished with 41 points, only 2 less than the first, Beroe , in spite of the 8–1 win against Beroe in the direct match. Many of the club's most notable stars played around this time, such as Antim Pehlivanov, Dimitar Vichev, Atanas Pashev , Dimitar Mladenov, Zapryan Rakov , Blagoy Bangev and Petar Zehtinski were part of
16008-433: The teams on equal terms, 3 points are awarded for a win and 1 for a tie, although the regulation of the various championships was different. The points are calculated according to the results achieved on the field. Administrative withdrawal of points is not taken into account. Canceled matches, as well as playoffs for promotion/remaining or participation in European tournaments, are not taken into account and are not included in
16146-404: The teams played a regular season, each team playing twice against all the others, once home and once away. The second phase was a play-off phase. In the following season, 2002/03 , the championship returned to the regulations of 2000/01 – 14 teams playing in a home and away format. For the first time in 6 years , CSKA Sofia became champions. The Bulgarian A Professional Football Group
16284-717: The teams were 16. There were new reforms at the end of the 1960s. There were many mergers between Bulgarian clubs. The most-famous are between CSKA Red Flag and Septemvri Sofia in CSKA September Flag, the capital teams Levski and Spartak in Levski-Spartak, Lokomotiv and Slavia in Slavia, the Plovdiv teams Botev , Spartak and Academic in Trakiya. Mergers happened between other Bulgarian clubs too. These mergers between clubs and reforms in A Group were made at
16422-427: The third ranked team. Note: If the Bulgarian Cup winner has secured its qualification for the European tournaments for the next season through results from Parva Liga, then the place in the UEFA Europa League play-off is awarded to the fourth ranked team in the final standings. The teams in the bottom eight are split in two sub-groups of four teams, Group A and Group B, depending on their final position after
16560-530: The title and European spots, while teams ranked 7-10 at the end of the regular season would play in the Europa Conference Group, with the 7th placed team competing against the 4th placed team from the Championship group for a UEFA Europa Conference League spot. The bottom four teams would compete to avoid relegation. This format lasted only one season, however, as the league was expanded to 16 teams for
16698-454: The top group is declared as Champions of Bulgaria and is awarded with the title. The six top teams compete against each other on a home-away basis. Three matches are played in every fixture of the top six, with the results and points after the regular season also included. At the end of the stage, every team will have played a total of 36 games. The winner of the group is declared as Champions of Bulgaria and automatically secures participation in
16836-430: The two clubs was dubbed as the " Thracian Derby " over the years. The club also has a strong rivalry with Levski Sofia and CSKA Sofia , the three of which compete to be the most popular teams in the country. Botev fans have friendly relations with Aris Thessaloniki fans. In January 2020 a group of Botev fans that attended a game between Aris and their rival PAOK Thessaloniki was attacked by PAOK fans. One Botev fan
16974-484: The various Macedonian dialects as part of the broader Bulgarian pluricentric dialectal continuum . Outside Bulgaria and Greece, Macedonian is generally considered an autonomous language within the South Slavic dialect continuum. Sociolinguists agree that the question whether Macedonian is a dialect of Bulgarian or a language is a political one and cannot be resolved on a purely linguistic basis, because dialect continua do not allow for either/or judgements. In 886 AD,
17112-535: The verb class. The possible existence of a few other moods has been discussed in the literature. Most Bulgarian school grammars teach the traditional view of 4 Bulgarian moods (as described above, but excluding the subjunctive and including the inferential). There are three grammatically distinctive positions in time – present, past and future – which combine with aspect and mood to produce a number of formations. Normally, in grammar books these formations are viewed as separate tenses – i. e. "past imperfect" would mean that
17250-452: The verb is in past tense, in the imperfective aspect, and in the indicative mood (since no other mood is shown). There are more than 40 different tenses across Bulgarian's two aspects and five moods. A PFG The First Professional Football League ( Bulgarian : Първа професионална футболна лига , romanized : Parva Profesionalna Futbolna Liga ), commonly known as Parva Liga or Bulgarian First League (currently known as
17388-571: The win, but Botev were eliminated after losing 1–4 in the first-leg. Another memorable win is the 1–0 home victory over Barcelona in a Cup Winners' Cup first-leg in 1981. On 29 November 1989, after 22 years of playing under Trakia , the club restored its authentic name – Botev . In 1992, the club was bought by a conglomerate of brokers led by Hristo Alexandrov and Hristo Danov. They brought in players with experience in Bulgarian football, such as Nasko Sirakov , Bozhidar Iskrenov , Kostadin Vidolov and Borislav Mihaylov . In this period, Botev signed
17526-402: The winter break of the 1968/69 season. After the winter reforms in 1968 until 2000, A Group remained with 16 teams, except in seasons 1971/72 and 1972/73 , when 18 teams competed in the league. The Bulgarian Football Union decided to make reforms. The Premier Professional Football League, created in the autumn of 2000, had 14 teams participating in it. At the end of the 2000/01 season,
17664-457: The yat alternation in almost all Eastern dialects that have it (except a few dialects along the yat border, e.g. in the Pleven region). More examples of the yat umlaut in the literary language are: Until 1945, Bulgarian orthography did not reveal this alternation and used the original Old Slavic Cyrillic letter yat (Ѣ), which was commonly called двойно е ( dvoyno e ) at the time, to express
17802-500: Was abandoned, because of a dispute between Vladislav and Levski over the replay of the final game. In the following 1925 season, SK Vladislav became the first champion of Bulgaria. The championship was reorganised for three seasons, from season 1937–38 to 1939–40, ten teams participated in a round-robin tournament , called the National Football Division . The inaugural season of the A Republican Football Group began in
17940-408: Was built in a period of two years. The new stadium was named Hristo Botev , in honor of the national hero. The sport venue was inaugurated with a friendly match between Botev and Steaua București , which was won by the canaries with 3–0 in front of 20,000 spectators. In 1961 Botev finished 3rd in the A PFG , for second time in the club's history. This championship also marked the first appearance of
18078-465: Was chosen in honor of the Bulgarian national hero Hristo Botev , as proposed by the club's host - Tenyo Rusev. The club's first management board also included Stoyan Puhtev, serving as chairman, Nenko Penelov as vice-chairman and Petar Delev as both a secretary and cashier. Interestingly, the Botev Plovdiv's constituent assembly was held on Sunday, March 11, 1912, and received a juridical registration on
18216-430: Was controlled by Serbia and Greece , but there were still hopes and occasional attempts to recover it. With the 1945 orthographic reform, this letter was abolished and the present spelling was introduced, reflecting the alternation in pronunciation. This had implications for some grammatical constructions: Sometimes, with the changes, words began to be spelled as other words with different meanings, e.g.: In spite of
18354-451: Was created in 2003. The group was formed by 16 teams, each playing twice against all the others, once home and once away. In the first season of the newly created A Group, the 2003–04 season, for the first time in history, Lokomotiv Plovdiv became champions, finishing with 75 points. In 2004–05 , CSKA Sofia won A Group for the 30th time. For the next two seasons, Levski Sofia were champions under manager Stanimir Stoilov . From 2005–06
18492-413: Was killed by a car. Two individuals were arrested and charged with murder. As of 15 November 2024 Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules . Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality. For recent transfers, see Transfers winter 2023–24 and Transfers summer 2024 . Up to twenty foreign nationals can be registered and given a squad number for
18630-415: Was once more decreased, this time to 12 teams, keeping the two phase format. This season was memorable since two of the most popular and successful clubs, CSKA Sofia and Lokomotiv Sofia, were both excluded from the league, despite finishing in the top 5 places. Both teams had accumulated debts and did not have the financial resources to pay them, so the BFU decided to take away their professional licenses. This
18768-429: Was rebranded to Victoria A Football Championship . In early 2013, for a short period of time the naming rights of A Group were bought from the news television network News7 , eventually renaming the competition's name to NEWS7 Football Championship . On 11 July 2019, the Bulgarian Football Union announced that the football division's name had been changed to efbet League , following a two-year sponsorship deal with
18906-417: Was renovated and the new visitors' changing room was built under it. On March 26, 2012, began a major reconstruction of the stadium, starting with conceptual design by architect Georgi Savov and supported by the new owner of the team Tzvetan Vassilev . According to estimates construction will consume about 15 million euro, and the facility must be ready for operation by mid 2015 just in time to host matches at
19044-536: Was the first time in the history of the A Group that CSKA was relegated. For the 2015–16 season , the BFU decided to further decrease the number of teams competing, this time to just 10, with a quadruple round robin format introduced, a format used in the Croatian First Football League and Albanian Kategoria Superiore . On 7 June 2016 the league's name was changed to First Professional Football League , following approval of new licensing criteria for
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