Levski Is Eternal: The Last-Minute Of The Bulgarian Dark Horse.
You never die, until you do. This is not the story of the latest warrior or the next self-made billionaire of Wall Street. No, this is the story of a club, a club that isn’t known across the world. Chances are that you have never heard about it, unless you’re Bulgarian — like me. Football hipsters might remember Razgrad’s “Ludogorets” from their UCL run back in 2016. Some, at most, might remember CSKA 1948. But Levski? That’s a new one, for many.
The beauty of the Conference League, a creation I thought was too much — and how wrong I was — is that smaller teams get to see the European dimension of football only the elite used to see. And for the first time, a Bulgarian side might qualify for it. It’s been a while since the country has seen any of its sides be close to European games.
The most beautiful of all of this, is the path. This wasn’t some mickey-mouse path, where Levski would crush its opponents one by one. No, Levski isn’t one of those healthily run clubs, that thanks to moneyball or elite scouting found the future star players. They’re sitting half-way through the efbet Liga, full of inconsistency. If they did trash the neighbors (Lokomotiv Sofia) 6–0, they did also lose to CSKA 1948 as well as Lokomotiv Plovdiv. In Europe, it’s been a similar story. They weren’t precisely brilliant against…
