📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Sunday 30 August
If you followed English football in the early 2000s you have almost certainly cheered or sworn at a man born in Dobrich on this day in 1978. Svetoslav Todorov scored the goals that carried Portsmouth into the Premier League, and then hardly got to play in it.
What happened on this day
He came out of Dobrudzha Dobrich, where his father coached, and moved to Litex Lovech in 1997, where the talent was obvious and nearly ended early: a bad injury in a league match and the operation that followed almost finished him at twenty, and he spent close to a year being put back together in a German clinic. He came back as the league's leading scorer. Harry Redknapp brought him to West Ham in January 2001 for £500,000, where he made his debut in a three-nil defeat at Liverpool and scored in his third game, an FA Cup tie Tottenham won 3-2. Then Redknapp left in May, Todorov fell out of favour under Glenn Roeder, and he played eight games all season.
Redknapp signed him again for Portsmouth in March 2002, and this is the part Brits remember. He was sent off in his second appearance, a two-nil defeat at Preston, which is not how you want to start. Then came 2002/03: 45 league appearances, 26 goals, a hat-trick on the final day against Bradford City that won him the division's golden boot outright, and Portsmouth up as champions. Redknapp's verdict was that he had "done marvellously, proving what a great player he is". Days before the club's first Premiership match, Todorov wrecked a cruciate ligament in training. He needed surgery, then more surgery, missed Euro 2004 and the whole of the following season, and played exactly one Premiership game in the year Portsmouth got there. He scraped back enough to score the winner against West Bromwich Albion in December 2005 and important goals against West Ham, Blackburn and Sunderland in a relegation fight. Wigan and Charlton followed, then home to Litex, four Bulgarian titles in total, and a coaching career. He is now on the academy staff at Crystal Palace.
Today's name days
Today belongs to Alexander, from the Greek for defender of men, and to everyone sheltering under it: Александър, Александра, Александрина, Александрия, Алекси, Алеко, Сашо and Сашка. It is not a small club. At the end of 2009 Alexander was the twelfth most common male name in Bulgaria, carried by roughly fifty thousand men, and it was the most popular choice of all for boys born in 2019. Our Bulgarian name-days guide has the rest of the calendar.
The best-known Bulgarian Alexander is Alexander I, the Battenberg prince who ran the country from 1879 to 1886. As for the etiquette, remember it works the opposite way round to a birthday: the celebrant hosts, the door is open without an invitation, and you do not walk through it carrying nothing.
Why this matters for British expats
Most days here the cultural traffic runs one way, with you learning their references. This is one of the rare ones that runs both ways. Mention Fratton Park to a Bulgarian football man of the right age and he will know exactly what you mean, because Todorov's promotion season was watched closely here, and mention Todorov in a British pub and somebody will remember the hat-trick against Bradford. It is a small thing, but shared reference points are what conversations are built from, and you now have one that needs no translating in either direction.
Sources and further reading
Todorov's career is set out on his English Wikipedia page, which is unusually detailed on the Portsmouth years and carries Redknapp's assessment of him, with the Bulgarian entry covering his start at Dobrudzha, the injury that nearly ended it and his return to Litex. The name statistics and the prince come from their own Bulgarian Wikipedia articles, and today's list of names from the Bulgarian name-day calendar.