Tuesday 16th May 2017
Bulgarian First League
During the course of my football travels I've made some extremely spontaneous decisions but few compare to this random trip nearly 2,000 miles across Europe to live in Bulgaria for a week.
At the time I'd just relocated back to Doncaster, had paid the deposit for a new flat and was waiting to confirm a moving in date until, however, a speculative glance on SkyScanner revealed Wizz Air were offering stupidly cheap flights (£35 return - Monday to Friday) from Donny Airport to Sofia!
Being a budget savvy person and not due to start my new job until the end of the month, that search was followed by another for hostel prices and it didn't take very long to realise that spending a week in Bulgaria could, in theory, be cheaper than paying a week's rent for a flat in Doncaster.
It just so happened that a round of First League fixtures were happening in this particular week with both Levski Sofia and CSKA Sofia scheduled to be at home on consecutive days.
Some might say it was destiny and, before anyone could blink - the moving in date had been arranged for a week later, the flights were booked and I was hammering my computer keyboard a bit more to find out exactly what Bulgaria was like as a country.
Although the Brexit farce meant the exchange rate wasn't the best (£1 = 2.36 Bulgarian Lev) it was still ridiculously cheap for absolutely EVERYTHING in Sofia.
The hostel I'd booked cost less than £5 per night and included breakfast, a 45-minute taxi-ride in rush-hour traffic cost just £5, whilst a ticket to watch Levski Sofia worked out at about £1.20. Food, drink and local transport in the city was also stupidly priced compared to back home; an extra-large pizza in a restaurant accompanied by drinks being roughly £6.
If that wasn't already good enough, the temperatures were also constantly above 25 degrees too!
Of course, the primary reason for my visit was to watch football and upon entering Stadion Georgi Asparuhov, it came as no surprise to see it was a typical old-fashioned ground with a huge circular bowl, towering floodlights and completely open to the elements with no roof in place (not that one was actually needed anyway).
The mostly turquoise coloured seats were quirky, if nothing else, but they were sparsely populated - even in this era prior to social distancing being a global phenomenon, everyone could have comfortably had a dozen or so seats for themselves!
Unsurprisingly, Ludogorets (who by coincidence I'd already seen in action twice in the 2016/17 season - away to Basel and then on a snowy night in Copenhagen), pretty much wiped the floor against their more illustrious counterparts to emerge as quite comfortable 3-1 winners.
Marcelinho put them ahead on 21 minutes and Wanderson Cristaldo Farias (what a name!) very quickly made it 2-0 to provoke discontent and grumbles from the Levski fans who'd been bothered enough to turn up. David Jablonsky pulled one back on the half-hour mark, but another strike from Wanderson ensured the three points were going back to Razgrad.
Levski's 'ultras' were silent for most of the night before bringing the flares out as darkness fell during the second half, whilst there were several derogatory chants aimed at the opposition who are perceived as a non-entity, empty shell of a club who've just bought their way to several league titles.
At the time of writing, Ludogorets have just clinched their 10th successive championship but they're still some way behind Levski's haul of 26 crowns.
CSKA Sofia remain as Bulgaria's most decorated club having been champions on 31 occasions although just four of those have come in the last 25 years.
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