Recently 12 people have been detained in Bulgaria including leading football players from A Group, for alleged match fixing. The operation for detainment started last Tuesday, however the investigation actually kicked off nine months ago. It was triggered by a signal from UEFA to the Bulgarian Football Union which referred the case to the Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor’s Office. The authorities have been authorized to act by the Specialized Court meaning that the case is seen as serious organized crime.

Official statements have been laconic mentioning neither names nor football clubs because investigation is underway. A senior official from the Interior Ministry however said that the subject of investigation were matches and figures from A Group thus refuting speculations that matches of the Plovdiv-based Lokomotiv in Spain were investigated into.

This is not the first case of its kind in the dark pages of Bulgarian football. At the beginning of this year a major corruption problem emerged linked to players from the junior national team. Corruption in Bulgarian football however is not confined to 2014. Bleak statistics carried by the sports websiteSportal.bgsuggest that from 1995 till 2010 a dozen of presidents and other top management of football clubs were killed. Why do such people fall victims to such crimes? Is all this linked to betting or to other reasons? The investigation should come up with the answers. Investigation however should not boil down to just a handful of football players who seem to be only the insidious tip of the iceberg in Bulgarian football. The problem should be explored more thoroughly, because otherwise Bulgarian football might sink just like The Titanic.

English Daniela Konstantinova