PFC Lokomotiv Plovdiv
|
|
PFC Lokomotiv Plovdiv is a Bulgarian football club, from the town of Plovdiv.
Locomotiv Plovdiv is established in 1936 under the name "Jeleznicharski Sporten Klub" (JSK). Its founders - engineer Iliya Paharkov, engineer Todor Atanasov, engineer Petar Mihailov and Petar Shevkenov are working for the railway company, just like all of the players. Mihail Shevkenov is selected to be the first coach. The beginning, as usual, is difficult as the money for facilities, player kits and balls come entirely from voluntary contributions of the people working at the railways. The player's shirt colours are white and black, the shorts and the socks are black, while the away kit is red and black. The black-white colours of the kits is the main reason for the fans to come up with its nickname "The Plovdiv Juventus". Before the name "Locomotiv", the club has been having names such as JSK - Levski, Slavia - Chengelov, Slavia, Torpedo.
Compared to other Bulgarian clubs, Locomotiv has not got many trophies although it was a vice-champion in 1973 and has won the Cup (in those days called Cup of the Soviet Army) in 1983, when in the team was the greatest Locomotiv player in all times - Hristo Bonev. Better known as "Zuma", Bonev's debut is in 1966 but, by the next year, he already becomes famous throughout Bulgaria. For his astonishing 98 matches for the Bulgarian national team, Hristo Bonev has scored 47 times and has been captain of the team in 42 games, both of these are records in the history of the national team and are currently still unbeaten. He is also the first professional Bulgarian player that has played abroad and, because of his key role for the successful World Cup 1970 and 1974 qualifying campaigns, he has been chosen as player of the year 3 times which is also a record. Bonev has played in 410 matches in the Bulgarian championship and has scored 185 goals. As a coach, he manages to successfully qualify the national team for the World Cup in France where, unfortunately, he does not manage to pass the first stage of the competition. Since 10th Match 2004, the legendary Locomotiv player is currently a manager in the club. There are many other great players - Georgi Vasilev, Ivan Kunchev, Stancho Bonchev, Eduard Eranosyan, Ayan Sadukov, Hristo Kolev, Stefan Draganov, Kostadin Vidolov. Eduard Eranosyan is currently the coach of the team that became the Bulgarian champion for first time in its history while Georgi Vasilev is the coach of the youth team. As mentioned above, Locomotiv won its only cup in 1983 but an interesting fact is that, at that time, the team is actually playing in the 2nd Bulgarian division which is still something unseen in the Bulgarian football history. Due to problems mainly on financial basis, the team's performance in the 80s and 90s has been fluctuating and this is the main reason for the team to fall into the second division twice.
Since the middle of 2001, Georgi Iliev, owner of Velbajd Kjustendil FC, decides to move to Plovdiv by buying Locomotiv FC. The current Velbajd coach - Dimitar Dimitrov, popular throughout the country as "Hero" now becomes coach of Locomotiv, hoping for making the team Bulgarian champion after winning past championships with other clubs such as Litex and Levski. In the next two seasons, however, Locomotiv finishes on 4th and 6th place respectively, which is even not good enough for qualifying in Europe. Georgi Illiev decides to hire younger and more ambitious coach who can develop younger talents and make a competitive team that can possibly "attack" the European scene. The team under its new coach - Eduard Eranosyan was not seen as anything special regardless of the perfect start of the championship since the wins were mainly against weaker teams. The players, however, gain enough confidence and comfortably manage to win their first games against some of the strongest teams - Levski and CSKA, permanently occupying the 1st place. Due to the bad preparation for the second half of the championship, Eranosyan gets fired which was considered as weird action by the fans given the good work that the coach did so far. The assistant coach - Ivan Marinov is then chosen to lead the team but the overall team performance starts to deteriorate when it reaches to a draw against the main rival - Botev Plovdiv and a catastrophic 3:0 loss from Levski Sofia. In addition to these problems, part of a tribune on "Lauta" Stadium collapses due to lack of maintenance by the local government that owns it. In the whole anarchy that arises, Eranosyan is brought back into the club as a coach and the team manages to recover its stable performance and become champion of Bulgaria even 1 match before the championship has ended. More than 50000 thousand citizens were celebrating in the streets together with the players and regardless of the local rivalries with other football clubs, everybody accepted the trophy as something positive because the trophy is a victory for the football in Plovdiv and Locomotiv is an irreplaceable part of this city.