The run now stands at 22, and the questions being asked around Spartak 1918 are no longer polite ones.
The terraces1 Feb 2027
The mood at Spartak 1918 has turned into something else
Supporters who sing when it goes badly are supporters. Supporters who gather afterwards are a problem, and everybody inside the building knows which of the two this now is.
Two goals and a mark of 8.93 to go with them. Strikers are judged on afternoons like this one and remembered for far fewer of them than people imagine.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Spartak 1918 have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Georg Stojanovski has gone, the accounts have $1.2M in them, and the supporters have the feeling of having been sold something themselves. Good business and a good decision are not always the same thing.
Boardroom1 Feb 2027
Spartak 1918 close the window on a squad of their own making
2 in and 1 out, and no more changes for months. The manager has what he has, the supporters have their opinion of it, and the table will have the last word.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Boris Mladenov has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑2, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
Squad14 Dec 2026
Renato Amorim falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
It has stopped being a mood in the stands and started being something organised. Boards can ignore a bad atmosphere for a long time; they cannot ignore this stage of it for very long at all.
50 goals in these colours now, every one of them somebody’s memory. There is a supporter in the stand who can tell you where he was for most of them.
Squad7 Dec 2026
Rúben Ribeiro falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
The manager has re-ordered his thinking and Dimo Krastev has come out of it lower. He will be told it is temporary, and the players who have heard that before will avoid his eye.
Successful dribbles: 24. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad23 Nov 2026
Renato Amorim falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Nikolay Milanov after the 0‑0 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
“Thirty minutes, door closed, everything said. We shook hands after.” Whatever was in the room stayed in the room, and Vasco Oliveira trained the next morning like a man with less to carry.
The manager wanted a different profile for this opponent, which is a real football reason and no consolation. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
The board was up, the win was priced in, and then Beroe scored. There is no worse minute to concede in and the ground emptied in the silence that follows one.
Squad16 Nov 2026
Words at Spartak 1918 training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Rúben Ribeiro is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
“A point is a point and I will take it, but we should have had all three.” Nikolay Milanov after the 1‑1 draw, and the sentence every manager in the country said at some stage this weekend.
“I respect the manager and I am not going to sit here and pretend I am happy.” It is the most common sentence in football and it has never once been the end of a story.
11 points at the turn. The first half of a season is a promise; the second is a bill, and the town is about to find out which of the two this one was.
The dugout9 Nov 2026
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Nikolay Milanov left the room before anybody could ask which.
Squad9 Nov 2026
Rúben Ribeiro falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Beroe in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
The shape wanted a different profile against this opponent, which is a real football answer and no comfort at all to the man it is about. He did nothing wrong and he did not play.
3 matches, no goals, and a training ground that has tried everything. It will end — droughts always do — but nobody at Spartak 1918 can tell you which week it ends in.
16 signings in three months. Every one of them may be an upgrade and the team can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild that never appears in the transfer-window verdicts.
“The supporters are entitled to be angry. So am I. We will put it right.” 0‑1, a manager saying the necessary things, and a dressing room that heard a different version of them.
17 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Spartak 1918 lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
Ognyan Vladimirov and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Match17 Oct 2026
Nobody could stop scoring
6 goals. Both benches spent the second half looking at each other rather than at the pitch. Purists will complain about Spartak 1918 and Septemvri in equal measure; everybody else had a wonderful time.
4 saves does not settle the argument about whose fault it was, and the argument will run all week. Goalkeepers carry these scorelines whoever caused them.
Successful dribbles: 24. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
Form comes and goes; this has not gone. Ivaylo Nedelchev is 21, and the version of him training now would not have got into the side he was in a year ago.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Afonso Freitas has just signed for Spartak 1918, and for once the answer mattered.
17 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
The dugout28 Sep 2026
The view from the dugout
“We will look at it, we will learn from it, and we go again.” The three sentences every manager keeps for a 0‑2 defeat, delivered by Nikolay Milanov to a room that had heard them before.
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the whole of the defence. 10 saves, several of them the kind nobody expects to see made, and ten outfield players who owe him a drink.
Xande had done his part in building a 2-goal cushion. What happened after that was collective, and Levski were allowed back into a match that had been finished with.
Footballers are asked about their boyhood club so often that nobody listens to the answer. Rúben Ribeiro has just signed for Spartak 1918, and for once the answer mattered.
Angel Granchov was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Spartak 1918 offered $140.0K; Cherno More said it was not close. The manager will be told the money is still there for the right player, which is what managers are told.
Clubs spend fortunes looking for players and occasionally find one down the corridor. Angel Tsvetanov is that, and the reception he gets on his first appearance will be different in kind from the one any signing receives.
There is no fee, no unveiling and no agent on the steps. Dragomir Ivanov has been at this club since he was a boy and is now, formally, one of the first-team squad — which for a local readership beats any signing of any size.
The deadline has passed and the squad is the squad. 16 arrived, 7 left, and everything else printed about this club last month was a rumour that stayed one.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Nikolay Milanov after 0‑3, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
Successful dribbles: 14. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.