Bulgarian football champions CSKA Sofia would not take part in next season's Uefa Champions League, a letter sent by the European football governing body to Bulgarian Football Union (BFU) in the late hours of June 4 2008 said.
Club's president Alexander Tomov, who fans consider the main “villain” in the drama, has already filed his resignation, leaving the post to Emil Kostadinov, one of CSKA former top players.
Uefa's letter was a reply to BFU's inquiry on June 2, in which the Bulgarian football association asked Uefa to give CSKA an extension period to deal with its financial debts. CSKA failed to meet BFU's June 2 deadline for submitting the required papers and was denied a license to play in Bulgaria's top division, called Group A, next season.
As reigning champions, the club has the right to take part in the June 27 draw for the first and second qualifying rounds of Uefa's Championship League. Uefa's letter, published on BFU's website, said that it could not make an exception for CSKA, which means that the club is out of the tournament.
Hours before Uefa's letter was made public, the chairperson of the official CSKA fan-club, Dimitur Angelov, told priovate broadcaster Nova TV that should CSKA be disqualified from both Bulgaria's Group A and Uefa's Champions League, the fans would protest against the Government by blocking the main streets in Sofia.
Dimitrov's anger was aimed at Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, because “it is the Government that have let CSKA president Tomov do this thing to CSKA and get the club into debts”, Angelov said.
He added that it was not the fans' job to know what was going on with club's finances, but the authorities'. “It is a joke. CSKA had the papers sent to them by BFU in December last year and they had all the time in the world to prepare, but failed,” Dimitrov told Nova TV.
“Tomov preferred throwing news conferences almost every day instead of working on CSKA paperwork. He simply loved being in the spotlight of media attention,” Dimitrov added.
On June 3, BFU said that CSKA had millions in unpaid debts to the state. In reply, Tomov said that the club owed nothing to the state in terms of mandatory social security contributions, as has been reported in local media.
His claim was that BFU's financial experts have made a mistake while conducting their audit report and some revenues were incorrectly presented as losses and debts. According to Tomov, CSKA has even registered a profit of three million leva and BFU's decision was based on incompetence.
Contrary to Tomov's statements that the club was in good financial state, other CSKA officials, such as the club's financial director Alexander Garibov, have said that the club has taken actions to clear all its debts.
This is the reason why CSKA can still hope to play in Group A next season. According to Dnevnik daily, the club was in the end given an extension by BFU to set its finances in order by the end of June. CSKA's Uefa Champions League dreams, however, are over, which will cost the club millions of euro in lost revenues.
