You've all heard the story about the changed Iliya, who, upon looking at himself, discovered that he was still in his old rags.
A more accurate metaphorical expression of what CSKA has been for several years now, despite the loud and bold slogans that are poured out annually before the start of each new season, cannot be found. It is not a European future, it is not the dethronement of the hegemon, it is not campaigns in Europe, a bright future and whatever else you can think of from the list of praises and chest-beating.
But the picture in reality is radically different and has nothing to do with the proclamations, and now I will try to explain why CSKA will continue its free and humiliating fall this year, and probably the next ones as well. Yes, we all hoped that with the change of ownership, the Mycenaean stinking practices that led CSKA to a state of Slavization would finally end (I think that a more appropriate term cannot be found, or at least I cannot think of one). It was announced that the club would be structured as a modern European one, things would be done properly and people would be sought who were really good at their job profile and had proven themselves professionally.
Well, at first things didn't go exactly like that and we saw the two monuments from the time of the Micreta turn into monuments with more sophisticated signs, but it would be a bright future if we could pass it on.
It passed and went away from us, and the monuments were sent to the warehouse, but things were, to put it mildly, a failure. However, people were appointed who really had great work biographies and we were happy again and said to ourselves again “The end! Things will happen now!“
But things didn't happen. A lousy selection, shoddy coaches, a shameful final, a shameful play-off and you know what. And now you see that things are somehow repeating themselves – and with selection, and with coach, and with management staff.
Why do things happen this way?
I will try to explain, at least according to what I see, and also based on the conversations I have had with the most influential administrator in the club.
CSKA's main problem is the team, because:
- selection in CSKA is very weak and chaotic, and this is due to the fact that the method by which players are identified and attracted is not clear
- the role of the coach in selecting players and what weight he has in making decisions is not clear
- CSKA's selection is an end in itself, not for building a team; Players are taken from wherever they can or according to some scheme that is currently opaque, but not those who have a strictly defined playing and personal profile in order to create a cohesive, homogeneous team with similar playing characteristics, and this is a prerequisite for only one thing - games like the last three seasons, with the current one briskly walking along the beaten path towards the same abyss. If I may say so - CSKA likes to stumble over the same stones repeatedly, which is not typical of smart people.
- the selection organism in CSKA speaks clearly about only one thing - the model is no different from the model of the previous management.
There was a Stoycho Stoilov, who slaughtered and hanged in the selection plan and skillfully directed the locker room to achieve the goals of the game, and the important decisions were made by father and son Ganchev.
Here things are suspiciously similar - the only one who has a say in the selection, as became clear from the latest press conference for the presentation of yet another figurehead, who replaced a high-quality Portuguese specialist who fled with a hundred places, is Metodi Tomanov a.k.a. Chief Scout.
No flies like coaches, sports directors, let alone economically, have a say. Whatever God Meto says, that's it. Boyko Meau and the crazy coach have no say. Do things look like those with Akrapovic and Ilic, for example? And not only with them.
- CSKA has practically abandoned its prospects for European development and raising the club to at least an average European level.
What Noga has done, which is not small at all, but which he stubbornly continues to keep quiet about, because otherwise people will ask themselves the most logical question “Why did you let him leave?“, will practically sink under the cobwebs of the mediocrity of the new sports director, who is, and seemed to have realized his role as a sacrificial lamb. CSKA's intentions to join the European family of clubs with a presence and established networks in teams and academies will remain, because there are no serious partners who would take seriously a club that treats people who have come to build the foundations of something working and normal not so correctly.
And looking at the whole picture, we must inevitably realize that CSKA's situation in our untenable championship, which has nothing to do with the rest of the football world, is as unfortunate as it is tragic.
While we are making heroic efforts to attract a group of players, some completely lost to football due to injuries, some with a fading career and having toured two dozen teams like Matei Preobrazhenski, the others, most of whom are without money and who are actually present in CSKA, have slowly built strong squads, some play in the EKT, others we simply cannot beat, and things are shaping up not to change this season, which is already leading the fans to something more than despair.
There is no point in offering solutions and recipes for getting out of this vicious circle. This would work if there was a real desire in the club for things to happen, and not just talk, throwing things to the wind and actions of cutting off heads and bringing new sacrificial lambs to the forefront.
And Iliya will continue to stand on the sidelines of the square, twisted in his ragged and dirty clothes and will wonder why no one wants to let him into the dance.