You've booked already! Fair ,playQuote:
Originally Posted by zero
You've booked already! Fair ,playQuote:
Originally Posted by zero
It's a decent draw. It would be disappointing not to get the better of them over two legs. Maybe they're better than I'm giving them credit for but I honestly couldn't name a single current Bulgarian player - maybe they have some younger talent coming through?
Hungary collapsed from the late 80s onwards and have only recovered recently. Bulgaria went higher than us (World Cup Semi Final) and have fallen further and for longer I'd say. Norway haven't qualified for anything since Euro 2000. Scotland went from France 98 to Euro 2020 without qualifying for anything. Wales of course famously didn't qualify for anything from 1958 to 2016.Quote:
Originally Posted by MylesNotMiley
But Greece must have had one of the biggest and swiftest ever collapses - they won Euro 2004, qualified for Euro 2008, WC 2010, Euro 2012 and WC 2014, then collapsed to 1 win in 10 games in a soft Euro 2016 qualification group and haven't qualified for anything since. Obviously they're on the way back now.
I think the point is that loads of countries of similar size to us go through lean spells, but eventually come back from them. Bulgaria's fall seems longer and deeper than most though. This playoff might give us a hint as to whether we're on a Bulgaria trajectory (I don't think we are) or something on a smaller scale.
This is important, but as I understand it not in respect of the north. They're understood to be accepting that they are no longer involved as far as automatic qualification goes. However, we do need to stay in B to compete with Scotland and Wales as, in the not unlikely event that none of the three qualify automatically, the Nations League ranking next time might be used to allocate the two automatic qualification places. That said, Scotland and Wales may well be in the A division anyway, so it may not be seen as a fair way to allocate the places and they may use performance in the qualification groups, or a mini playoff instead.Quote:
Originally Posted by Insidetherock
Didn’t Aidan O’Brien score against them too to secure a 1-1 draw? From a Callum O’Dowda cross? Or did I imagine that?Quote:
Originally Posted by tetsujin1979
Just realised that was against Poland. Expected O’Brien to kick on a bit tbh. He played very well in a couple of games for usQuote:
Originally Posted by Fixer82
Just looking through the Bulgaria squad it's incredible that they now haven't got a single player contracted to a club in a Top 5 European league (for contrast we have called up 16 in the last year, even in our current state). Was reading a few articles about what's gone wrong in Bulgarian football and their situation makes our current issues look small in comparison. We really need to be putting them away in March, no excuses here.
Remember them in ‘94. Lethal!Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
Yordan Letchkov (sp) was one of my favourite players of that tournament! Class! They played some great stuff too, all round. A lot of fun watching them in that tournament.Quote:
Originally Posted by Fixer82
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fixer82
Of course, Stoichkov was the star but, boy, could he moan... at the ref, his opponents, his teammates - at one point, against Sweden I think, he fell over and lost the ball - when he got up he was scowling and muttering and Jimmy Magee said "Sometimes, I think, he even hates himself"Quote:
Originally Posted by SkStu
Seemingly Boris Mihaylov, who was the goalkeeper in that team, went on to become a John Delaney type figure in the Bulgarian football association and is blamed for a lot of their more recent troubles.
The keeper with the toupee of course (allegedly!)
Can you really trust a man that won't show you his real scalp ? !Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
His son Nickolay was a good keeper, at least in his early 20s. He was bald by 21, so I strongly suspect, on a windy day, the toupee might not have fallen far from the tree…Quote:
Originally Posted by pineapple stu
Back in 2008, I befriended a lad from Bulgaria who I asked about Valeri Bojinov and Nickolai Mihaylov - and he ended up ranting about Boris and corruption in the football association and the country at large. He was also shocked to see our attendances at a friendly - I think it was around 43,000 in Croke Park against Serbia. I think he said their most recent friendly had about 3,000 people at it (against Finland maybe?)
Thinking back to that time, you used to have 7 and 8 team groups to qualify for a tournament unlike our new poxy 4 team groups. 14 games… we’ll have 6 to qualify for a World Cup
Those were the days… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA...008_qualifying
David Healy scored as many goals in one qualifying campaign as anyone had scored in their entire Northern Ireland career (at the time) - that’d be like Evan Ferguson scoring 68 goals in the qualifiers next autumn.Quote:
Originally Posted by elatedscum
Over to you Evan !Quote:
Originally Posted by elatedscum
Considered doing the same but getting to Plovdiv is the guts of a full day of travel for me. No direct flights from Ireland in March either.Quote:
Originally Posted by zero
Apparently an about turn has been done on this and the draw has been opened up again, adding a small possibility that we could still get a five team group and have two qualifiers in June.Quote:
Originally Posted by Eirambler
In this regard and only this regard would I offer some solace with Bulgarians. Post Chernobyl fall out, large enough parts of Bulgaria were ‘toxified’ by radiation fall-out. It became a thing, sudden total hair loss (total alopecia) among many young men. Another footballer from the same area was Stillian Petrov, a heathy young man stricken with acute leukemia, that being a major disease effect of the post-Chernobyl disaster.Quote:
Originally Posted by seanfhear
Bulgaria’s gov. (i.e. Kremlin approved) put the lid on the reports they themselves commissioned post Chernobil, but somehow the original reports themselves were leaked out.
In football terms, Bulgaria are where they should be in the rankings, I’d bet the garden shed that Ireland will be too good for them.
Seems like there’s now a small chance of us being in a 5 team group - with England / Switzerland - due to a change FIFA has just made to the qualifying procedure.
https://x.com/dalejohnsonespn/status...ydrwumxbzBxdHQ
Bulgarian manager has stepped down - https://www.bfunion.bg/news/50798/0
he was double jobbing as manager of Bulgarian league side Cherno More, and the other clubs were not happy about this
(translated using Google translate)
Quote:
Today, March 4, the head coach of the Bulgarian national team, Ilian Iliev, submitted his resignation electronically. It will be considered at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Bulgarian Football Union, which will be held next week.