Hristo Stoichkov resigned as Bulgaria’s national football coach on April 10.

Although a series of reports predicting his resignation had been appearing in the Bulgarian-language sports media for two weeks, Stoichkov’s move came largely as a surprise.

Formerly Bulgaria’s football idol, Stoichkov had a hard time in the past six months, with his team showing disappointing results in the qualifiers for the Euro 2008 in Austria and Switzerland. The first blow Stoichkov took was from Aston Villa midfielder Stiliyan Petrov, who at the end of 2006 left the team, blaming Stoichkov. At this point, the media started hinting that something was wrong in the national team if one of the biggest stars could not get along with the coach. Stoichkov remained silent. March 28 2007 was the turning point. On that day, Bulgaria hosted Albania and Stoichkov had the chance to show everybody that the national team was doing well. Two days before the game, Petrov made the news by saying he had decided to come back to the team and that he had sorted out all his problems with Stoichkov. What was supposed to be a triumph on home scene, instead turned into a disappointing 0:0 draw, which almost ruined Bulgaria’s chances of advancing in the next stage as The Netherlands (14 points) and Romania (11 points) lead the group with Bulgaria coming third (nine points). Everybody except for Tottenham striker Dimitar Berbatov performed poorly in the game, leaving Stoichkov defenceless against all critics. The end of the game meant exactly that. Everybody, from the sports media to the supporters wanted Stoichkov out. Stoichkov received formal support from his bosses at the Bulgarian Football Union (BFU), but it was clear that in reality he could not count on them. A tough character as a player, Stoichkov showed courage and did not even comment publicly on the attacks. That is why his decision to quit the job was taken as a surprise. An hour after Stoichkov resigned, BFU chairman and a former teammate of Stoichkov in the national team Borislav Mihailov said that he had accepted the resignation. “It was his own decision. We are looking for a new coach since we do not have much time before the next game with Belarus on June 2,” Mihailov said.

Mihailov said that Stoichkov had told him that the reason for his departure was the bad atmosphere around the national team, created by the media and other people.  

Sliven mayor and BFU vice president Yordan Lechkov told Focus news agency that Stoichkov had acted “like a real man” by resigning. As for the future coach of the team, Lechkov said that it was very unlikely to be a foreign specialist. “First we will have problems attracting one, secondly it will be very expensive for us and third but not least, he will not have enough time to get accustomed to the atmosphere,” Lechkov said. On April 25, the BFU is to hold a regular meeting where the question of a new coach will be discussed.

Another Stoichkov teammate Emil Kostadinov, a member of the BFU executive body, said that Stoichkov’s decision was the right one. “It is not a bad moment for Stoichkov to resign,” Kostadinov said. “In a way Stoichkov made it easy for us,” he said.

Former national team coach Dimitar Penev said that Stoichkov’s decision was surprising. Bulgaria still had a chance to qualify for Euro 2008, Penev told Focus. Penev is rumored to be among the possible replacements for Stoichkov. With Penev in charge, Bulgaria won fourth place in the 1994 World Cup in the US.

So far only one player has commented on Stoichkov’s resignation. Striker Vladimir Manchev, who plays for Spain’s Valladolid, told Focus that he was surprised. “I did not expect such a development,” Manchev said. “People should not be happy about Stoichkov leaving because this is never a pleasant thing.” 

The clouds cleared for a while when Dimitar Dimitrov, general manager of the national team who resigned together with Stoichkov, spoke with Bulgarian National Television (BNT). “Personally I have wanted to quit the job for the past two months. The situation is unbearable. We had no support from the media, but only criticism,” Dimitrov said. He said that Mihailov had offered him Stoichkov’s job. “I refused because I did not want to create any kind of speculation about me wanting to replace Stoichkov,” said Dimitrov. “We made only one wrong move in the qualifiers so far. We haven’t had a loss in the five last games but no one cares,” he said.

In the end, however, it may turn out that there was another aspect to Stoichkov’s decision to quit. Soon after news of his resignation broke, Spain’s Dario Radio said: “Stoichkov is the new head coach of Spain’s Celta Vigo”.

This was confirmed to BNT by Celta Vigo’s media office. Celta Vigo plays in the Spanish Primera Division (First League) and is currently at the bottom of the table, occupying 18th position out of 20 teams. Stoichkov’s goal is to save the team from dropping out from Primera Division, Celta Vigo told BNT. “We need a young energetic coach to deal with our situation and we think that Stoichkov is the man,” a team spokesperson said.  Stoichkov reportedly agreed to a contract until the summer of 2008. It turned out that Celta Vigo had been negotiating with Stoichkov for quite some time and his resignation might turn out to have been carefully planned. By April 11, Stoichkov had made no official statement.  The contract with Celt Vigo will be Stoichkov’s second engagement as a coach after his job with the Bulgarian national team. Earlier, many thought that it had been too early for him to take over the national team only two years after his last game as a player and with no experience behind him. The 41-year-old took over after Bulgaria failed to progress beyond the group stage at the Euro 2004 finals in Portugal.

Now Stoichkov will have the Spanish Primera Division to test his skills on.

Meanwhile, the Latvian Football Federation also accepted the resignation of their national coach Jurijs Andrejevs. On March 28 Latvia suffered a humiliating loss at the hands of Liechtenstein.