Bulgaria’s national football team will start its qualifying session for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa on September 6 with a historic game against Montenegro in Podgorica.

This will be the first official game for Montenegro’s team, which has played a total of 10 friendlies since the day the country declared its secession from the now-defunct state union of Serbia and Montenegro in 2007.

Besides the fact that Bulgarian football players will enter the history of world football, this time around, Bulgarian football fans have reason to hope that their team might make it to a big football tournament six years after they played in the Euro 2004 in Portugal.

The last time that Bulgaria played in a World Cup tournament was in France in 1998.

When Bulgaria was drawn in qualifying group 8 in November 2007, together with the teams of Italy, Republic of Ireland, Cyprus, Georgia and Montenegro, things looked rather good for the team.

Indeed of all the teams, Italy stands as the obvious favourite, and not just because it is the reigning world champion, ranked number two in Fifa’s World Rankings. Bulgaria has always had a negative record against the Italians, with the lost semi-final at the 1994 World Cup always given as the example. The statistics say it all: of the 13 matches played between Bulgaria and Italy, Bulgaria has lost seven and won just two, scoring 12 goals against 25 for the Italians. The last win Bulgaria had against Italy dates back to 1991, when Italy lost 1:2 in Sofia.

With first place giving the rights for qualifying for the final stage of the World Cup tournament left to Italy, football specialists and commentators in Bulgaria rushed to make calculations about Bulgaria’s main opponent for the second place in the group, the Republic of Ireland.

If one looks at the officials Fifa World Rankings from September 3, Italy is the only team in group 8 that has a better position in the charts than Bulgaria, which is ranked at 16.

Ireland is ranked at 38, Cyprus at 65 and Montenegro, understandably is ranked, 136th in the world.

The main opponent
The Irish, Bulgaria’s main opponent, as defined by some Bulgarian media, have shared a similar fate to Bulgaria’s in their football past. Both teams even have similar jersey colours, and apart from being on the opposite side of the continent, do not differ that much in their style of play – long balls in front of the goalkeeper and attacking at a pace that relies on technique rather than speed.

Proof of that equality is the statistics on the matches played between the two teams. They have met a total of eight times, with each side wining three times, which gives a 50 per cent success record on both sides.

The friendlies that Bulgaria and Ireland played this year showed a similar trend.

Since the Italian Giovanni Trapattoni took on Ireland in February 13 this year, the team has played three friendly matches: a 1:1 draw with Serbia, a 1:0 win against Colombia and another 1:1 draw with Norway. Bulgaria has won all of its three friendlies this year: a 1:0 win against Northern Ireland, a 2:1 victory against Finland and a victory with same result against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

This similarity in performance of the two teams was the main reason they agreed on a schedule, according to which their first encounter will be on March 28 2009. This, hopefully, will give Bulgaria the chance to win at least six points in its three games: against Montenegro, against Italy on October 10 2008 and against Georgia on October 15. A point against Italy will be more the welcome in the Bulgarian camp.

The runners-up
Cyprus, Georgia and Montenegro have never been considered major football forces, but all three of them have certain qualities that might turn into advantages and get into the way of both Bulgaria and Ireland, if, why not, Italy.

Cyprus has played in all qualifying rounds for World Cup and European championship tournaments but has never managed to qualify. However, this year the country managed to send one of its football clubs, Anorthosis Famagusta, into the group stage of Uefa’s champions league tournament for the first time in its history. This in itself was a big boost for Cypriot football pride.

The good thing about Bulgaria is that it has played a total of nine games against Cyprus, and has won all of them.

National pride of Georgia will defend itself against Bulgaria and all the other teams in group 8, as well. The political situation after the military conflict with Russia is more than enough reason for the Georgians to look for a success on the football field.

Their opening game against Ireland has been moved from Tbilisi to Mainz, Germany, because of the Russo-Georgian conflict, and all eyes will be set on the Georgians, who have lacked any significant success in their football history since the fall of communism.

Bulgaria has played three matches against Georgia. The first one in 1994 was won with a score of 2:0, while the second one in 1995 was lost 1:2. In a 2005 friendly, however, Bulgaria scored one of its greatest victories in terms of results after winning 6:2.

The big question
How Montenegro will perform in its first-ever official matches is a question that not only Bulgarians are asking themselves. The tiny country has proved to be a good place for raising football players, since a number of the stars on the former teams of Serbia and Montenegro and Yugoslavia came from Montenegro. One such case is AC Milan’s former star, the current president of Montenegro’s football federation Dejan Savicevic.

In one of his first interviews after the draw in Durban last year, Savicevic told Reuters that his boys were more than capable of playing good football and making their presence felt, “although world champions Italy and Bulgaria are the favourites to finish top”.

His strategy was simple: “Our ambition is to keep the group wide open until the very end and get into a position to cause an upset, but it would be audacious to make any promises on our competitive debut.” This is what Bulgaria fears most, since such an “upset” caused by a team considered an easy bite has been one of the main reason for Bulgaria to miss the last two major football events.

The home front
Bulgaria might have been lucky in getting into group 8, with opponents who are quite surmountable, but this will require consistent performance by Bulgaria’s players, something they have failed to show in the past couple of years. Coach Plamen Markov’s problem increased after two of the team’s key players got injured and will miss the opening match on September 6: these are Manchester City’s Martin Petrov and Valeri Bozhinov. As the friendly against Bosnia and Herzegovina showed, the team’s performance depends directly on that of one of Bulgaria’s stars, Dimitar Berbatov. His stunning transfer from Tottenham to Manchester United on September 2 could be a boost for his playing, but at the same time, will concentrate all the attention of the other team’s defenders.

The biggest problem for Markov, however, is not just that he will be missing key players, but also the lack of them on the bench. As he said at a news conference recently, “I don’t see many quality players coming from Bulgarian football clubs.” This means that Bulgaria will once again rely on the players playing abroad to do the work. So far, such has succeeded only once, in 2002.