Bulgaria's national football team held its second training session of the camp in Sofia without seven players. The training session at the Boyana base began in pouring rain and was part of the preparations for the team's final two matches in Group C/4 of the Nations League.
Stefan Velkov has still not arrived from Denmark, where he plays at club level. However, Andrian Kraev and Yoan Stoyanov joined the squad; they play for the Israeli clubs Hapoel Tel Aviv and Hapoel Be'er Sheva.
CSKA's Teodor Ivanov, as well as Arda players Dimitar Velkovski and Svetoslav Kovachev, underwent recovery sessions in the morning. The three did not take part in the afternoon training session.
The last absentee was goalkeeper Plamen Andreev. He played for Debrecen in the match against Újpest in the Hungarian league and is expected to arrive in Bulgaria in the evening. The same applies to Stefan Velkov.
Marin Petkov and Rosen Bozhinov spoke to the media. The two described the atmosphere in the team as better compared with the start of the campaign.
“Judging by the standings, we are apparently where we deserve to be – in third place with four points, but we will try to improve that in the final two matches,” Marin Petkov said.
He described the upcoming clash with leaders Iceland as difficult and said that Bulgaria must perform better than in the first meeting between the two teams, which ended in a 0-3 defeat.
Rosen Bozhinov said that the incident in which he fainted during a Pisa match in September was now in the past and that he had not experienced any similar problems since.
The defender is more optimistic than Petkov and believes that Bulgaria can still achieve the goal of finishing first in the group set by Bulgarian Football Union president Georgi Ivanov.
Bozhinov described what happened under the previous manager as a “coaching mistake”. Asked whether the next coach should be Bulgarian or foreign, he said that qualities were more important than nationality.
The national team continues its preparations for the remaining matches against Iceland and Estonia in the Nations League.