October 14 – Tensions ahead of tonight’s European Championship qualifier between Bulgaria and England have been racked up after Bulgarian coach Krasimir Balakov accused England of having a bigger racism problem than his own country.
The build-up to the game in Sofia has been overshadowed by fears England’s players could be subjected to abuse after they were targeted during the qualifier against Montenegro in Podgorica in March.
A section of the Natsionalen Stadion Vasil Levski will be closed following incidents of racism during games against Kosovo and the Czech Republic in June.
But comments that England players might walk off the pitch en masse if any of them are targeted individually provoked an angry response from the Bulgarian football authorities, who wrote last week to
UEFA to complain about England’s “unjust branding” – and now the coach has waded in.
“What I can say is that I don’t think we have a problem,” Balakov said, referring to the domestic league rather than at national level. “In the Bulgarian championship, we have a lot of players of different ethnicities and skin colour. I don’t think that we have this big problem like, for example, England do.”
“What I meant was that in the Bulgarian championship we’ve not had such problems while there have been incidents in various levels of English football involving racism, which I consider something normal because it’s a big country with a very diverse population.
“But we don’t have this problem in Bulgaria, I can assure you of that.”
Meanwhile, reports say 14 England fans were arrested ahead of last Friday’s game in Prague when England were beaten by the Czech Republic – their first defeat in a decade in either World Cup or European Championship qualifying.
In all, there were 31 arrests, almost half of them England supporters.
Ugly scenes erupted when English fans began throwing bottles towards armed officers in riot gear. A recorded warning was played in English before the Czech police advanced on the group, who had taken over a small square in the city’s Old Town.
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