Ludogorets Razgrad: From third-tier Bulgarian football to an European sensation

On October 14, 2014 Ludogorets Razgrad, a club from one of Bulgaria’ relatively deep countryside cities with a population of just over 30,000 people, hosted the football juggernaut Real Madrid in Bulgaria’s capital, Sofia. This was the typical David versus Goliath match and the first ever Champions league home game for Ludogorets. That night the “Eagles” from Razgrad, only the second Bulgarian team to ever to appear in the Champions League group stage, took on the most successful team in the tournament by storm, opening the score after just six minutes before going on to lose marginally by 1:2. World class players like Luka Modric, Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo were largely in disbelief as they were matched both physically and technically all over the pitch. Los Blancos’s Portuguese crown jewel Ronaldo even saw the first of his two penalties saved by a heroic stretch from goalkeeper Vladislav Stoyanov in the first half. It was close, but not close enough to stun the reigning European champions.  

Only 2 seasons later, the story would repeat. Over 42,000 fans stared incredulously at the scoreboard at Parc de Princes as it flashed, minute 91’, with this scoreline: Paris Saint-Germain 1:2 Ludogorets Razgrad. Similar to their first european home appearance in Sofia a couple of years before, Ludogorets were making life difficult for a star-studded team, this time the then 6-time French champions who were struggling to cope with a sleek counter-attacking football played by the minnows from Bulgaria. The underdog team featured some quick-fire attacking players, including 5 Brazilians, 2 Romanians and even a Madagascariense midfielder - an offensive force put together with a simple yet outrageous goal in mind - to outsmart and outscore one of Europe’s football behemoths who were playing with the superb talent of Edinson Cavani and Angel Di Maria. That night, with 4 minutes of added time, PSG’s Argentine would score one very scrappy goal to bring the game level on goals and save the pride of the Parisians.

In retrospect the story of Ludogorets’ rapid ascent to the coveted grounds in the Champions League and the Europa League seems almost like a fairytale. Above all, reaching the group stages was a massive overachievement for a club which, only 3 years prior to its pinnacle seasons in the middle of the decade, back in 2009, was on the brink of financial insolvency and gasping for air in the provincial South-East league, the third tier of Bulgarian football. Back then, the team from Razgrad was one of the obscure Eastern-European clubs struggling in a dreadful championship hierarchy and being used to playing semi-professional football for decades.  

What started this transformation from a struggling small-city team into a 5-time Bulgarian champion was an initial 25,000 euro investment by a local businessman and one of Bulgaria's emerging tycoons Kiril Domustchiev. With two of his companies already located in Razgrad, Huvepharma’s pharmaceutics and Biovet, a manufacturer of nutritional farm food, Domuschiev was rather easily persuaded by club representatives to back up the local team with аn initial non-binding financial transaction to save them from their own financial demise. It was precisely this moment that would turn Ludogorets’ fate for years to come.

This investment back in 2009 was sensible and made easy by another favourable factor. The tie between Domuschiev’s businesses and the Razgrad team throughout the years was so strong that up until 1997 the team still carried the name “FC Antibiotic” - a reference and a honor to the city’s pharmaceutical history. Today, this close connection is just as strong, proven by the stadium’s name - “Huvepharma Arena”. 

 
Fast forward to 2011 and Ludogorets were already drawing scared looks from Levski, CSKA and Litex Lovech - three of the established title-runners in Bulgaria’s elite league. After back-to-back promotions and seeing Domuschiev officially take over the ownership of the team, the success story of the Eagles followed them everywhere they went. 

In their first ever season among the best clubs in Bulgaria, Ludogorets claimed what turned out to be an unprecedented domestic treble for a debutant team. Playing with surprising confidence and quality unlike any other promoted team before, Ludogorets kept on winning and winning and eventually put their hands on both the Bulgarian League, the Bulgarian Cup and the Bulgarian Supercup. Particularly fierce was the final game on matchday 30 when Ludogorets faced off CSKA in a direct derby for the championship title. Only a win would guarantee the Eagles lifted the league trophy for the first time in their history books. And they did just that, seizing their chance and winning 1:0 thanks to a sublime free kick by Miroslav Ivanov.  

By that time the club and Domuschiev in particular were already heavily spending in Ludogorets’ football legacy. Within the next 3 years the club would announce its grand new stadium that almost tripled its spectators capacity to over 10,000 and a contemporary youth academy base drawing the best talents from across Bulgaria with annual open-entry training camps. Ruthless in the pursuit of their success, Ludogorets wanted to draw expertise and inspiration from Europe’s best. This explained their decision to send their first elite level coach Ivaylo Petev to FC Barcelona for a winter internship alongside Josep Guardiola to learn and draw expertise from the tactics and squad development of the Catalonian.  

By that point, what Ludogorets was set to become was something of a protege to Juventus and Bayern Munich and their way of absolute domestic superiority. With identical mercilessness Ludogorets continued to steamroll through Bulgaria's underfunded, badly managed and conflict-thorn rival teams. Title after title, any second place was seen as a colossal failure. Their results since 2011/2012 season show just how dominant their presence in Bulgarian football has been over the last decade.The Eagles have now won an astonishing 12 domestic titles in the last 8 years, including all 8 of the championship trophies in Bulgaria’s top tier. Their 9th consecutive Bulgarian league trophy seems all but a few months away. 

Over the span of these last 10 years Ludogorets have also upscaled tremendously in the way they scout and bolster their first team roster. Similar to Shakhtar Donetsk and their long-term strategy to recruit Brazilians, so did Ludogorets. In fact the number of South Americans has been so big, that a few have integrated seamlessly into Bulgarian life for long enough to claim Bulgarian citizenship and two of them - Marcelinho and Wanderson have even put on the national jersey and now play for the Bulgarian national team. Taking advantage of the inconsistency with which rivals Levski, CSKA and Litex transfered players in and out without really holding on to foreign star players for more than a couple of seasons to cover for their amounting debt, the Razgrad team has been the only fiscally healthy club in the country for years. This has allowed them to invest heavily in their scouting system and even more importantly has enabled them to keep high-performing players in the club despite increasing european club interest.   

Such a commanding presence to football matters has Ludogorets been over these years, that the eternal derby between the two most successful clubs in Bulgaria - Levski and CSKA, a oftentimes bloody clash with nearly 75 years of high-octane history, has somehow taken second place to derby games with Ludogorets, who have also prevailed in the majority of matches against both teams. 

With a line of coaches coming in and departing with the same cold-blooded resolution the club has consistently applied, it’s easy to see how the appetite for winning has taken some highly respected Bulgarian coach casualties over the last years. Today, Ludogorets are finally managed by a proven european warrior - Pavel Vurba, a man who seems the perfect fit for the attacking football the club continues to preach. The former Viktoria Plzen manager previously led his Czech compatriots to a Champions League group stage and two Europa League knockout stages - favourable facts that eventually landed him the coaching job at Ludogorets.

In this year’s European campaign, Ludogorets came out second in their Europa League group stage, which also included the teams of Espanyol, CSKA Moscow and Ferencvaros. While their next opponent in the round of 32, Inter Milan, may prove a bite too large to chew, Ludogorets’ carefully constructed DNA would ensure there would be no spared energy in going for yet another European night sensation.

List of the more notable results of Ludogorets Razgrad in the European tournaments:

PSV Eindhoven 0:2 Ludogorets Razgrad (Europa League group stage)
19 September, 2013
First ever European group stage game for Ludogorets Razgrad

Ludogorets Razgrad 1:0 Steaua Bucuresti (1:1 aggregate, 6:5 on penalties)
27 August, 2014
Champions league playoff round featuring Romanian defender Cosmit Moti, saving a penalty in the shootout.

Ludogorets Razgrad 1:2 Real Madrid (Champions League group stage)
1 October, 2014
Real Madrid escape dire loss of points 13 minutes before the final whistle thanks to a Karim Bezema winner.

Ludogorets Razgrad 1:0 Basel (Champions League group stage)
22 October, 2014
First ever win in the Champions League group stage by any Bulgarian team.

Lazio 0:1 Ludogorets Razgrad (Round of 32, Europa League)
20 February, 2014
Ludogorets would go on to draw 3:3 in dramatic fashion in Sofia for the return leg and advanced 4:3 on aggregate.

PSG 2:2 Ludogorets Razgrad (Champions League group stage)
6 December, 2016
Angel Di Maria salvages a point in the first minute of added time to save PSG from humiliation.

Ludogorets Razgrad 5:1 CSKA Moscow (Europa League group stage)
19 September, 2019
Ludogorets demolishes Russia’s second most successful club in the first game of the group stage under its first ever coach who’s been a former player of the club - Stanislav Genchev.