Jonathan Schilling, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
World Cup grand finale this weekend!
Let’s cast our minds back to 1994, when plucky Bulgaria fantastically and unexpectedly made it to the semi-finals and ended up coming an impressive fourth. For years afterwards, mention “Bulgaria” to people worldwide and guaranteed the first thing they’d say is “Stoichkov, Lechkov”, the two main stars of the 1994 team.
Actually, a 2002 interview with legendary Bulgarian footballer Yordan Lechkov was one of the first professional translating assignments I ever did. He was best described as inarticulate. I swear one response by Lechkov was a 20-second series of vague sounds, as if he was having a stroke, that I ended up translating simply as “um, yes”.
And what happened to Lechkov post-1994?
After not really adjusting well to the pressures of club football, he returned to his hometown of Sliven in central Bulgaria and opened a huge disco called Imperia, the presence of which could be heard through the city at all times of the night, much to the distress and consternation of many. So what did Lechkov figure was the best way to mitigate these complaints? He worked out that if he was mayor, then he can make sure his businesses can operate hassle-free. And so he ran for office – and won! And how was he like as mayor? As expected, completely corrupt… though that didn’t stop him being re-elected once. But his run didn’t last and eventually the whole of Sliven turned on him. At least the road leading to Imperia was renewed under his watch (can’t say the same about the rest of Sliven’s infrastructure at the time).
Come the following World Cup in 1998, Bulgaria had qualified with honours and expectations were high that the team will repeat its 1994 feat. So much so that a whole string of songs were released in anticipation of living that high again. One was this classic chalga song (below) by Kali – 4-4-2: Sistem Forever – in honour of the football formation that brought Bulgaria glory in 1994.
I remember calling a cousin of mine just before Bulgaria’s first group match (against Paraguay) and she basically said “Hello, I’m about to watch the match” and then hung up on me – rude! Anyway, it wasn’t to be. Bulgaria failed to win any of its group matches, with insult to injury being the 6–1 defeat to Spain in its final World Cup match to date.
