Police officers use water cannons as the Bulgaria fans protest against the President of the Bulgarian Football Union Borislav Mihaylov outside the stadium.
\n| Photo Credit:
\nREUTERS\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\nPolice officers use water cannons as the Bulgaria fans protest against the President of the Bulgarian Football Union Borislav Mihaylov outside the stadium.
\n| Photo Credit:
\nREUTERS\n<\/p>\n
Mihaylov was first elected in 2005 to lead the national football federation. The men\u2019s national team has slumped under his leadership and has not qualified for a major tournament since Euro 2004.<\/p>\n
Mihaylov was out of office for 18 months after he resigned in 2019 under pressure from the government. He left one day after Bulgaria fans made Nazi salutes and targeted England\u2019s Black players with racial abuse during a Euro 2020 qualifying game in Sofia.<\/p>\n
Denkov cited that \u201cracist scandal\u201d in his letter to Infantino.<\/p>\n
Mihaylov returned to counter a leadership campaign by Dimitar Berbatov, the popular former Manchester United forward. That led to disputed elections and court cases.<\/p>\n
Berbatov condemned the violence during Thursday\u2019s protests, saying \u201cany kind of aggression during protests only provokes more aggression.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were ready to protest at the stadium as a regular audience, but after that right was taken away from them, emotions were bound to escalate,\u201d Berbatov told the bTV channel on Friday.<\/p>\n
From 2011-19, Mihaylov was a member of the UEFA executive committee, the body that runs European football. Weeks before he won the UEFA election for a seat on its ruling body, the Bulgarian team was involved in an international friendly game against Estonia in Turkey that was part of a notable match-fixing investigation.<\/p>\n
Bulgaria\u2019s 2-2 draw with Estonia, in which all four goals were scored from penalty kicks, was linked to betting scams by a Singapore crime syndicate that had fixed games worldwide.<\/p>\n
That game, which took place nearly 13 years ago, is part of the ongoing investigation revealed Friday, Bulgarian media reported.<\/p>\n
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The moves follow the mass protests that gripped Bulgaria\u2019s capital on Thursday as several thousand football fans took to the streets to demand the resignation of Borislav Mihaylov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":8893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football-sport-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baysidesports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}