From the special reporter "Vijesti"
In the eighties of the last century, the Iron Curtain hid the charm of Sofia, and behind it many other stories that are difficult to imagine took place today... One of them is certainly the sports one, when the greatest talent that Bulgaria gave was kicked out of football for life.
Hristo Stoičkov, then 19 years old, in the CSKA jersey lived for the biggest derby of the city and the country against Levski. But the Bulgarian "eternity derby" (it's not difficult to translate) was always more than football, it brought out the best in players, but also the worst...
The young blood of the extraordinary talent boiled during the 1985 Cup final, the whole game was spent in nervousness, pushing and even hitting, and everything continued with a fight in the tunnel of the "Vasil Levski" stadium, only for the Central Committee of the Communist Party to decide to end his career forever Hristo Stoičkov.
After that, the great master went to the army, and soon someone in the Central Committee, however, remembered that the young man from Plovdiv was too precious to be expelled from football for life.
The future legend of Bulgaria, Barcelona and football in general soon made this game even more beautiful again, but the rivalry between CSKA and Levski, just like before, remained one of the most fiery, but also "craziest" in Europe...
Vitoša and Sredec
When the players of Budućnost run out onto the pitch of the "Vasil Levski" stadium tonight, they will not play against the aforementioned great CSKA, but the club that was created in 2016 from the revolt of some of the fans and legends of that club, when the "armymen" saved themselves from being shut down by merging with Liteks Lovec.
Rival Budućnosti today has 1948 next to its name, the year the "old" CSKA was founded, and playing with names is not new to Bulgarian football.
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Thus, after the mentioned events in 1985, by order of the then president (dictator) Todor Živkov, both Levski and CSKA were shut down, then re-founded, but with new names - the first was Vitoša (after the famous mountain near Sofia), and the second was Sredec.
Those names lived until the fall of communism, and allegedly the police reacted every time someone called the clubs by their old name before that.
Levski also has "the oldest derby in Sofia"
Although since 2008 and 2009, neither CSKA nor Levski have been the champions of Bulgaria (mostly due to the appearance of Ludogorets), those two teams are still the biggest in the country - the "army" were champions 31 times, and the "blues" 26 times.
And while CSKA has more titles, Levski fans are proud of the fact that they were founded long before the "hated" rival. It happened in 1911, history was started by a group of students from the Sofia high school, and they decided to name the new club after the revolutionary and national hero Vasil Levski.
On the other hand, although they claim that the first CSKA stories began in 1923, this club was officially founded in 1948 as a club of the Bulgarian Army.
Both clubs have their own stadiums, and throughout history they have most often played derbies at "Vasil Levski".
In addition to the biggest eternal derby, Levski also has another one - the oldest derby of the city of Sofia against Slavia, which was champion six times before the Second World War, and only once after it.
Sofia never liked CSKA in 1948
When Budućnost plays tonight against the "new" CSKA, it won't be strange if they have more support in the stands than the hosts.
Although CSKA 1948 may have been created for moral and sporting reasons, it never managed to attract practically even a fraction of the fans of the "old" club.
So on the day of the match between CSKA 1948 and Budućnost in Sofia, you don't have the feeling that any football match is being played. There are no fans, no posters, and you will hardly find any of the fan props of that club...
Such things in Sofia, and practically in the whole of Bulgaria, are reserved for Levski and CSKA - clubs with armies of fans, but also clubs that even today often have many problems due to hooligans.
Sofia, even without the success of its clubs in recent years, remains a city divided into a red and a blue part, with the derby when everything in the capital comes to a standstill.
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