📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Thursday 12 November
Some defenders end up introduced by a single assignment. For Dobromir Zhechev it is 1966, in England, when he was given the job of marking Pelé. That is the story most likely to reach a British reader, but it is not the whole of his career, or even the most lasting part of it.
What happened on this day
Zhechev was born in Sofia on 12 November 1942, the son of the anarchist poet and translator Georgi Zhechev Tekeliev. He made his debut for Spartak Sofia at 16 in 1958, moved to Levski Sofia in January 1969 when the two clubs merged, won two league titles and two cups there, and became captain after the death of Georgi Asparuhov in 1971.
His international career kept crossing England's path. He won his first cap at 18 in June 1961, played in a 0:0 with England at the 1962 World Cup in Chile, faced Brazil in England in 1966, and won his last cap against England in Sofia on 1 June 1974. Named in that summer's squad for West Germany as well, he became the only Bulgarian footballer to be part of four World Cups, though he played in three. He even stood in as joint caretaker manager for one match, a 0:3 home defeat by England on 6 June 1979.
One match, two biographies
The two Wikipedia biographies tell the 1966 match with different emphases. Zhechev's Bulgarian biography says he man-marked Pelé in the 0:2 defeat by Brazil and, by its account, neutralised him, citing English press reports that Pelé was left unmarked only once, for a direct free kick. The English-language biography of Pelé says he scored in that match but was injured by persistent fouling from the Bulgarians and missed Brazil's next game. Read side by side, they describe the same match from opposite ends of the tackle.
From youth champion to youth developer
The more lasting thread runs through young players. As a teenager Zhechev was part of the Bulgarian side that won the 1959 youth European championship on home soil. Twenty-two years later, appointed Levski's head coach in September 1981, he gave first-team chances to academy players including Borislav Mihaylov, Nikolay Iliev, Bozhidar Iskrenov and Nasko Sirakov, and took the club to the national cup in 1981/82. The Pelé assignment is what gets him into an English-language article; the names on that early-1980s Levski team sheet are the part of his career that carried on after him.
Why this matters for British expats
Group 3 of the 1966 tournament was played at Old Trafford and Goodison Park, so if you grew up in the north-west, this is a Bulgarian thread running through your own football history. And if a Levski supporter mentions Mihaylov or Sirakov, it is worth knowing who first put them in the team. Zhechev died in October 2025, aged 82.
Sources and further reading
Zhechev's Bulgarian Wikipedia biography is far fuller than the English entry, covering his clubs, caps and coaching, and it carries its own account of the Pelé match. Wikipedia's pages on Pelé and on the 1966 World Cup give the Brazilian forward's side of that match.