Chernomorets plumb new depths

PFC Chernomorets Burgas Sofia set records in Bulgaria as the worst side ever to play in the top flight after an appalling 2006/07 league campaign.

Awful record
Ending the season with -2 points, having scored eight goals and conceded 131 in the course of their 30 league games, Chernomorets broke the dismal national record set by PFC Rakovski Ruse, who ended 1996/97 with one point and eight goals with 110 conceded.

License sold
The strange tale began 12 months ago when PFC Conegliano German, from the Sofia suburbs, won promotion to the A PFG and promptly sold their license to Ivailo Drazhev, former owner of PFC Chernomorets Burgas. He promptly renamed his new acquisitions PFC Chernomets Burgas Sofia and embarked on a doomed campaign which saw them drop three points without even kicking a ball.

Bad start
Initially using Sofia's Vassil Levski stadium for home games, the hastily assembled team were awarded a technical 3-0 defeat and deducted three points in their first home league game of the season against PFC Levski Sofia for failing to register enough youth players. Given the bizarre circumstances surrounding the team, few expected them to get any more points as the season went on.

Unlikely result
The club soon abandoned plans to make Sofia their base, instead playing their home fixtures at the stadium of whichever side they were due to play, with players not travelling together but turning up in private cars hours before kick-off. All of which made it amazing when, on 1 October, they managed to earn a 0-0 draw against high-fliers PFC Litex Lovech. "I am extremely happy about the point and our performance," said coach Ivan Atanasov. "We played with our hearts and we deserved the draw. To be honest, we were quite lucky but we are a young side and this draw will lift our spirits. Now we have to work harder and continue playing in this way."

Massive defeats
However, it was to be their first and last point of a season which ended with them conceding an average of 4.46 goals per game. Chernomorets also helped PFC Lokomotiv Sofia’s Tsevtan Genkov become only the fourth Bulgarian player to score six goals in a game prior to his move to FC Dinamo Moskva, and while they may not have broken FC Torpedo Ruse’s record 12-0 loss to PFC CSKA Sofia from the 1951 season, they came close twice, losing 10-0 against Levski and 11-0 in their return fixture against Litex.

New name
At the end of the season, the Bulgarian Football Union relegated the club to the third tier after they failed to fulfil the licensing criteria for the second division, but they may be back under a new name in 2007/08. The question is, can they do any worse than this season? European football may never see their like again.