By Alexander Krassimirov
September 24 – The president of the Bulgarian Football Union Borislav Mihaylov (pictured) expressed disappointment after the failure of Sofia’s bid to host matches from Euro 2020. blaming UEFA’s rejection on the lack of support from Bulgarian institutions.
“We had a great desire. Only the efforts of the Football Union and the people who work there were not enough,” said Mihailov.
Sofia was one of four bids withdrawn from the vote by UEFA on the morning of the vote, who said they were “adjudged not to have fulfilled the bid requirements by the UEFA administration.”
“The games had to be in Sofia,” said Mihailov. “This means that the municipality and all who are in Sofia had to support the application. They supported it with a piece of paper. I am in talks with Sofia’s mayor for six months. There is a resolution of municipal council to be supported, but anyway the mayor did not sign the documents for UEFA till the end,” he added.
According to Mihaylov, there are several factors that have contributed to the failure. “First of all we do not have the stadium – people are not sure whether it will be built in time to host. There are many other things in the future that will probably take place in Sofia. We need an underground line to the stadium, the airport is not big enough to accept a championship of this scale.”
“It’s hard, it’s hard even for me with my contacts to convince people. As you know, next year we have a European Under-17. With the problems of Botev and its stadium in Plovdiv, we have to move all the games in Burgas. This is extremely uncomfortable and now I have to justify to UEFA.”
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