The coach of the Bulgarian national team Ilian Iliev wants his players to be aggressive and show a much better face than the match in Plovdiv. Iliev spoke at the press conference at the “Aviva“ stadium before the return leg in the Nations League tournament. The "Lions" will try to turn the aggregate score against the Republic of Ireland after falling 1:2 in Plovdiv on Thursday.
"The most important thing is to change our behavior tomorrow, to react more aggressively, to change our face from Plovdiv. We did the harder thing there – we found the result, but we failed to ride the wave of enthusiasm“, the coach began.
"We recently played a match like tomorrow's. It was in Belfast, a tough loss. That's why I want us to win matches, be aggressive and not have a result like the one in Northern Ireland".
Iliev will have to reshape the entire defense, after goalkeeper Dimitar Mitov, Viktor Popov, Alex Petkov and Zhivko Atanasov were ruled out due to injuries and suspensions.
When asked what the lineup will be, he replied: "We haven't decided on the lineup yet, the remaining eight of the starters from Thursday who are here will have a training session. And we'll see tomorrow during the day who will be available. And I hope they will be sincere".
"Let's not think about repeats from Belfast. Let's not go back and that's why I want us to forget it. Tomorrow we will go out and defend Bulgaria on the field. And what will happen is a result of our behavior.
Bulgaria can win tomorrow by one goal and that will equalize the total score. If there are no more goals, it will come to penalties. However, in the Bulgarian camp they do not make such calculations: “We did not think. Of course, one goal is not a big difference. But the result is the behavior on the field. Everything we have listed should not be just words, but we should do it practically”.
"We do not accept that we played aggressively. I just hope we play better. We did not come to kick. We are not a team that is rude. That's exactly why we lost in Plovdiv, if we had approached more aggressively, we might not have lost".
Asked if he doesn't think it's a contradiction that Nikolay Minkov, who stepped on Evan Ferguson's feet at the end of the match, was not sent off, he said: "I didn't watch the situation. But there is VAR and we can't comment on the referees' decisions".
But tomorrow there is a possibility that Bulgaria won't win and will remain in League C. How problematic is this for the overall face of Bulgarian football? "I don't think we should separate League B and League C very much. Luxembourg, for example, is not responsible for remaining last in our group. You can lose the match, but have the desired face".
"That's all I want us to do to regain our good level of play. Even if we get into the higher group, we won't become world champions. We have to show play and growth. In Luxembourg, you remember how much criticism there was for the second half, but we won. We had one loss and everyone still said – it's not our team, we can do even better".
Finally, he was asked if he had a conflict with the president of the PFL Atanas Karaivanov and whether the head of the League was with the team in Dublin because of him, which made the coach smile. "Let's not comment on non-football things, but concentrate on the match. It's complete nonsense that I can throw someone off the plane".