The Bulgarian national team will play on a pitch that is not at all excellent tonight on the island of Crete, sportal.bg reported. Ilian Iliev's boys are going to face Greece in a test match at the "Pagritio" stadium, as our team held their training session in the city of Nikos Kazantzakis last night.
A maximum of 15,000 spectators are expected to attend the facility in Heraklion due to the fact that the match is on a weekday.
It is curious that "Pagritio" is being renovated this year, but it is difficult to notice such a thing. On the contrary - it looks neglected and the missing visor on the metal "grille" from the "B" side is conspicuous. The stadium was built for the 2004 Olympic Games and is owned by the Greek Olympic Committee. At "Pagritio", Cristiano Ronaldo himself, then 20 years old, scored an "Olympic" goal in an otherwise unfortunate tournament for Portugal.
During the Bulgarian team's training session, a group of cleaners were busy washing the sand from the seats in the stands - sand blown in from the Sahara, which can be seen on many cars in Heraklion. By the way, when I started writing this text, a mass fight broke out in the roundabout next to the hotel after two scooters had crashed. Fists flew between a swarm of people, chaos ensued, the police - none. Shortly after, a sharp voice rang out from somewhere... Sophie Marinova. Anyway. It's time for the test match in Crete. Then come the Spaniards.
The last Bulgarian goal against Greece was scored by the current CEO of Levski Daniel Borimirov.
In 1994, Dimitar Penev's players defeated the "Greeks" 4:0 at "Soldier Field" in Chicago for the first Bulgarian victory in the world finals, and Boreto scored the last goal. Hristo Stoichkov (2) and Yordan Lechkov also scored in the historic match.
In the next three decades, we had two more matches with the Greeks. In the first, we lost 0:1 in 1999. Then the 18-year-old CSKA striker Dimitar Berbatov made his debut for the national team. Then in February 2004 we lost 0:2 in Athens, the match being part of the preparation of Plamen Markov and Otto Rehhagel's players for Euro 2004. Subsequently, the "blue and white" won the championship in Portugal. In total, we have ten wins, four losses and five draws against our southern neighbors.