Bulgar and Nasty
It was just as the Crazy Frog had finished belting out across the Tannoy into the gloaming of the Black Sea that it happened: out came the giant flag of Georgi Iliev, surrounded by thousands of smaller Iliev posters, held up by the Lokomotiv Plovdiv faithful. ‘We will never forget, we will always follow your way,’ read another banner.
‘I think it’s a bit sad that they love this guy so much,’ said Tsvetan, my faithful guide. He outlined a few of the rumours about good old Georgi - the gang rape, the trafficking in people and body-parts, the five homicides and the torture of rivals. He didn’t sound very nice, really, and there seemed to be quite a few potential reasons why the Loko club president had been shot by a sniper shortly before the Uefa Cup first-round draw.
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Lokomotiv versus Bolton Wanderers, the Naftex Stadium, Burgas. At half-time the home fans did even better, replacing Georgi’s giant portrait with a pyrotechnic display that left the pitch swathed in wispy intestines of smoke and the Uefa officials in a dither. The late Georgi’s side went one up and it looked as if his presidential spirit really was stalking the turf, before some sort of justice prevailed and two late goals saved the day for Sam Allardyce and the Wanderers (club president Nat Lofthouse: no known organ-smuggling charges).
‘Typical,’ said Tsvetan. ‘We Bulgarians always drown at the end of the river.’ I asked him what he meant. He said that Bulgarians are always failing at the last minute, grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory. ‘Like your European Union membership?’ I ventured.
Bulgaria. I’ve been twice now and confess I can never quite understand who runs the place, nor why so many Brits trust it as a retirement home. Tsvetan was doing his best: the government consists of a bewildering coalition of the NDCV, the national movement of Simeon II - or the yellow party - the BCP socialists, and the DPC Turks, ranged against the Union of Democratic Forces - the Blue party - the Ataka nationalists and a host of others. But then some journalists I met in Sofia the night I arrived had told me about two other acronyms - SIC and VIS, both of them umbrellas for the gangster underworld, a shadowy mixture of former weightlifters and wrestlers who formed security companies after the collapse of communism, companies which in turn had bought off the necessary politicians in the interior and finance ministries. Iliev’s Multigroup was SIC, apparently, linked to the BCP.
