📅 ON THIS DAY IN BULGARIA, Wednesday 7 October
Seven league titles, six cup wins and 350 league games for one club. Thirteen years in Bulgaria and I still could not have named the defender behind those numbers, so let us fix that: Boris Gaganelov, born on this day in 1941.
What happened on this day
Boris Gaganelov was born on 7 October 1941 in Petrich, down in Bulgaria's far southwest, roughly the opposite corner of the country from Shumen. He was a late convert to the game: wrestling, volleyball and athletics came first, and football only at 15, a late start by any modern academy's standards. By 16 he was in the older youth side at Belasitsa, the Petrich club, and then its first team, which is where CSKA Sofia (the "армейците", ar-MEY-tsi-te, or army men) noticed him. He also had a brief spell at Pirin in Blagoevgrad while serving as a soldier, one B Group game. In January 1960 he joined CSKA, starting out in the reserves.
Fourteen years at CSKA followed, until the summer of 1974: 350 A Group games, two goals, seven league titles and six Bulgarian Cups, plus the title Заслужил майстор на спорта (zas-lu-ZHIL MAY-stor na SPOR-ta), "Merited Master of Sport", from 1965. Two goals in 350 games is the kind of return an English crowd would turn into a song. He added 36 European matches, 30 of them in the European Cup and six in the Cup Winners' Cup, and CSKA reached the European Cup semi-final in the 1966/67 season. After retiring he coached in the club's youth school, then joined the first-team staff as assistant to Sergi Yotsov and, later, Nikola Kovachev; Bulgarian Wikipedia's entries disagree on the year of the Yotsov appointment, so I have left it out. He died in Sofia on 5 June 2020, aged 78.
Boychinovtsi and 7 October
Our calendar data lists the small northwestern town of Boychinovtsi (Бойчиновци, boy-CHEE-nov-tsi), in Montana Province, under 7 October. Bulgarian Wikipedia's list of regular events for the town gives only a fair on 24 May, so I cannot tell you what, if anything, is laid on today. What it does offer is the municipality's postcard: yellow water lilies on the little Ribine river near the village of Lehchevo, and red meadows of wild peony in May near the village of Madan. The settlement dates to around 1600, when its first residents fled a plague in a village called Zatvornik; its population only began to grow in 1910–1911, when the Sofia-Vidin railway line was laid; and it was declared a city by state decree in 1974. The latest figure I have is 1,277 residents (31 December 2025), which in Britain would make it a large village with a railway station.
Why this matters for British expats
Football is the quickest way into a Bulgarian conversation, and Gaganelov is a useful name to have in your pocket. He played three matches at the 1966 World Cup in England, the tournament English football has never let anyone forget, and he was named Bulgaria's captain that same year, leading the side out 29 times in his 51 caps between 1963 and 1970. At the 1970 World Cup in Mexico he played one match. If you live in Shumen, there is a footnote for you too: the list of teams he coached includes Shumen, though Bulgarian Wikipedia gives no dates and no detail, so I will not pretend to know which era it was. The British equivalent is the loyal defender who gets a testimonial and a pub named after him. If the Cyrillic in this piece looks like a wall, the phrasebook will soften it.
Sources and further reading
The career figures, honours and dates come from the Bulgarian Wikipedia entry on Boris Gaganelov, checked against the English entry. The Boychinovtsi background is drawn from the town's Bulgarian Wikipedia page, which also explains why I have no programme to report for today.