FOOTBALL giant CSKA, popularly known as the Reds for their livery, have appointed Serbian Miodrag Jesic as their new head coach, with his compatriot Zoran Kraljevic as his deputy.
Kraljevic was Svalia's head coach during the 2002-2003 season, while Jesic previously was the coach of Bulgarian football club Slavia, Belgrade's Partizan, Turkey's Altay, and Iran's Pegah.
The latest move, announced on February 22, came amid much turbulence connected to personnel changes at CSKA. The two Serbians, whose one-year contracts came into effect on February 23, replace, respectively Ferario Spassov and his assistant, Mihail Madanski. With the changes, the coach's team now is Martin Gadev, another newcomer, and Angel Chervenkov and Stefan Trifonov.
Controversy surrounds the transfer of former CSKA captain Todor Yanchev to Russian club Shinnik. The matter has been referred to FIFA because of various alleged irregularities, including that the transfer was arranged without the knowledge of Shinnik's coach.
Yanchev's agent, Lachezar Tanev, said in an interview with Bulgaria's Gong Radio that the difficulties surrounding the transfer were the fault of "shady agents" who set up the transfer to the Russian club.
At the same time, CSKA ran into difficulties in its attempts to get Martin Kushev on board as a member of its team.
While Kushev's lawyer said that CSKA did not want to meet the conditions set by Kushev, including the way in which he wanted his salary to be paid, CSKA spokesperson Vladimir Rupov said that negotiations were "still underway".
Rupov made the statement at a February 17 news conference at which two new CSKA team members, Benoit Cauet and Tiago Silva, were presented.
While CSKA was going through its troubles, Bulgarian football legend and head coach Hristo Stoichkov found himself amid controversy following a series of media reports saying that Stoichkov had said that a World Cup qualifying match between Andorra and Macedonia, which ended 1:0 in Andorra's favour, had been fixed.
The first report of the allegation appeared in Spanish daily El Mundo Deportivo, and this was picked up by Macedonia's Makedonski Sport. On February 22, Bulgarian-language daily Standart quoted Stoichkov as confirming that he had information that the Andorra-Macedonia match had been fixed.
In a bizarre twist, Andorra head coach David Rodrigo appeared to hint that Stoichkov himself was involved in fixing the match.
In turn, Macedonian former head coach Dragan Kanatlarovski joined in the controversy, saying that no blame could be attached to Stoichkov. He described the reports against Stoichkov as a "fabrication".
While things were troubled on the football front, Bulgaria's tennis stars were faring better.
Bulgaria's young tennis sensation, Sesil Karatancheva, moved up from 97th to 89th place in the WTA rankings.
Top Bulgarian tennis player Magdalena Maleeva was reported this week to have reached 23rd place in prize income in WTA tournaments so far this year, having earned $68 704 since the beginning of 2005. She entered the Qatar open tournament this week hoping to up those earnings, in a quest for the tournament's prize money of $600 000. On the downside, Maleeva has just slipped in the tennis rankings, by one place down to 29th.

A correction

In the February 11 edition of The Sofia Echo, a new racing car was identified in a photo caption as having been unveiled by Eco Petroleum. In fact, the car was unveiled by Eco Elda Bulgaria. Eco Elda opened a new filling station on February 6 next to the SofiaLand theme park, where the new racing car, a Subaru N, driven by top Bulgarian racing driver Krum Donchev was shown as part of the event. Eco Elda now has 15 filling stations in Bulgaria and plans to raise their number to 30 by the end of this year. We regret the error.