So… Listen to this, there is a saying in Bulgaria, which is roughly translated to “Great quality doesn’t require much effort”. . .
and well… Dimitar Berbatov lived by those words… We’re talking about a man who seemed to just coast around for most matches, waiting for the ball to casually land on his feet… but the thing is… when that ball got to him… oh my god… he was tremendous every single time… Because he was a “luxury striker”. . .
he cared about winning, sure… but, if possible, he always insisted on doing it in the most beautiful way possible… When they asked him about his playstyle he quickly replied: “Those without beauty and grace in them, are powerless to win a heart”. . .
and win a heart, he did… As controversial as he was, Berbatov inevitably became a cult hero… not even being chased down by the mafia, being the victim of two kidnapping attempts or being outcasted by Sir Alex Ferguson was enough to stop him, no matter what, every time he got to the pitch, it seemed as though violins should be playing in the background, his touch was delicate, so fine, one of his coaches would say: “everything he plucked out of the sky, seemed to die on his toe”. . .
. but funny enough… as beautiful and poetic as that all sounds, it all came to be in the middle of a black and white, concrete jungle in Bulgaria… where little Dimitar first began compulsively practicing his touch with an inflated pig’s bladder and then a basketball… every evening, throwing it up in the air and then trying to control it on his foot… he did that every single day for years, we’re talking thousands and thousands of attempts… Think about it, that mentality added to the fact that his dad was a former top flight footballer, while his mom was a semi pro handball player… Berbatov just had to be a prodigy… All he needed now was some inspiration… And so…. after witnessing Stoichkov take Bulgaria to a 4th place finish in the world cup, he he decided he had to follow his footsteps… but he didn’t wanna play like him… because his idols were very different from Stoichkov, they were Alan Shearer and Marco Van Basten… one he admired for his no nonsense approach and eye for goal, and the other for his elegance… mix the two together and you get Berbatov….
a vintage ruthless penalty box predator, but also a modern, fine touched, creative threat… a one of a kind player who, at 18 years old, joined his first club CSKA Sofia, in return for just 22 pairs of boots and 50 footballs… that’s what you call a bargain… And over his time at CSKA, he grew exponentially, 6 in the first year, 16 in the second, then in his third season, in just 2 games vs Tiraspol in the UEFA Cup, he scored 7… And by the time December came, he was up to 16 in all competitions, despite having played just 15 matches. . .
But ironically, he was already becoming especially controversial… while his home fans began booing him, blaming the 19 year old for the fact they weren’t topping the league table… others seemed in love with him, maybe a bit too much as a few months into the season, Berbatov left the training grounds in the middle of the day to get something to eat when he was approached by a black car… Out of the car, came a friend of the family, asking him to come with him… Berbatov, still a naive young man, got into the car and was then dropped off at a restaurant… he goes inside and there’s no one there, except one guy having lunch, surrounded by a bunch of tough looking men… he was about to sit down with the bulgarian mafia… the man in front of him was Georgi Iliev, coincidentally the owner of Levski Kyustendil… and as per usual, he made Berbatov an offer he couldn’t refuse, he wanted him to leave Sofia and play for his team instead… as one of his relatives would say: “They would rather finish him than have him play for another club”. . .
Thankfully for him, after much persuasion, they allowed him to call his father, who quickly understood what was happening and got Pavlov, the owner of CSKA to get in contact and get them to leave the boy alone… I guess it could sound like an underwhelming end to the story, but I got something that maybe will give you an idea of how serious it was, both Pavlov and Illiev were dead in a matter of years… the cause of death, you ask? Sniper Assassination… Berbatov never even told his family what they did to him that day. .
. But one thing became clear, the moment he got out of there, Berbatov decided he had to get out of Bulgaria… And with Leverkusen taking him under their wing and allowing him to join their golden generation, with Lucio, Ze Roberto and Ballack, Berbatov himself said he “felt like the luckiest boy in the world”. .
. and he didn't even realize they were a year away from making history… 6 months later, Berbatov debuted with a hat trick in a friendly against DC United and earned himself a place in the team as a rotation player, then scoring 15 goals in 13 starts, right up to the 31st match day of the season… At that point…. Leverkusen sat top of the Bundesliga with 4 points to spare… In the Cup they had made it to the final, with Berbatov scoring 5 goals in 5 matches on his way there and even more impressively, in the Champions League, they had beaten Juventus, Arsenal, Liverpool and Man United, making it to the final… Leverkusen, who, in their history had never even won the league, and had only 1 cup title to their name, were now just a few matches away from a treble… But then, in the league, they failed to win any of their next 3 matches and watched as Dortmund snatched the title right out of their hands… Then to make it all worse, they lost the final of the German cup to Schalke and suddenly, their only hope left was the Champions League, but between them and the trophy stood the biggest barrier of all… Los Galacticos… Berbatov himself admitted he was so mesmerized just looking at them in the tunnel, that despite being taller than him, looking at Fernando Hierro, he felt like he was “looking at a mountain”.
. . Then half way into the match, as he witnessed Zidane score one of the greatest goals of all time to put Real in front… Berbatov, a fellow football artist, was hit with that same emotion once more, as he said: “I wanted to applaud, but I knew I couldn't”.
. . Still, these defeats scarred Berbatov… He felt he owed something to the fans… he wanted to break the curse of Bayer Neverkusen… in his own words, he wanted to “become the Maradona of Leverkusen”.
. . .
. but then… Ballack and Zé Roberto both left for Bayern and th team shocked the country by going on a disastrous season that had them below the relegation line with 2 games left… But even more impressive than that was how quickly they got back on top of their game, finishing the next season just 9 points off of the title, much thanks to Berbatov who closed out the league season with a streak of 13 goals and 8 assists in just 18 matches… truly world class numbers… From there on out, he kept pulling those same kinds of stats, but the results weren’t as encouraging, never breaking into the top 4 and suddenly, with the likes of Bayern, Atletico, Man United and Liverpool, knocking on his door… The Maradona of Leverkusen began to reconsider his own plan and eventually caved in… But what shocked everyone was that Berbatov picked Tottenham… And I gotta really make a point to say this… back then they weren’t what they are today, it had been over 50 years since they last stepped foot in the Champions League and their average placement in the league over the last 15 years was 11th…. But oddly enough, despite all of this, the move actually sort of worked out for Berbatov….
he struck up an incredible partnership with Robbie Keane, not only were the two pretty much telepathic, but Keane completely made up for Berbatov’s shortcomings, as he himself would say “Robbie ran all over the pitch, so that I could run in my head”. . .
And so, together, they sent Tottenham towards a level they hadn’t experienced in ages, with Berbatov pulling off an incredible 38 goals and assists in his first season, averaging one every 102 minutes, taking Tottenham’s player of the year award, getting into the league’s team of the season and earning a nomination to the Ballon D’Or, getting spurs to a 5th place finish and setting the UEFA Cup ablaze with an incredible run of 10 goals and assists in 9 matches… Had it not been for Tottenham's leaky defense, who knows what they could have won that season, but still in his second year, he took them to what would be their last trophy to this very day, scoring a decisive goal in the final to hand Tottenham the league cup… Once again, Berbatov felt like he was living a fairy tale, but then the doubts began creeping in, after all he was already 28 years old, if he was to make a move, it would have to come now… and of course, Sir Alex swooped in with perfect timing, telling the papers he planned to sign Berbatov, causing trouble between the club and the player, who would soon request to be left out of the team, saying he couldn’t focus on his game in the middle of this media storm… and before you could know it Berbatov was landing in Manchester, hoping to join…. Manchester City… but that’s when Sir Alex once more defied the odds, surprising him in the airport and instead bringing him over to Old Trafford, picking his brain for a few hours and eventually securing his signing for 31 million pounds with just minutes left before the transfer market deadline… However, once again, this move seemed like a strange decision. .
United had Tevez, Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo up front… they were the greatest attacking trio in the world, one of the best ever honestly… and all of that came from the fact they were lightning quick, so where exactly would sluggish Berbatov fit in? Well, the answer is simple, for a while he just didn’t… There were moments of brilliance and he did make it to the Champions League final, even if he played a smaller role in that campaign, but overall, the criticism and the claims he was just lazy were the loudest… Even in his second season, with Tevez and Ronaldo gone from the club, he still didn’t quite manage to blow anyone away, though to be fair it clearly didn’t help that he started the season by being threatened with another kidnapping… Berbatov was just going on with his life, when his mother called him, claiming she had been approached by the Bulgarian mafia, who requested half a million pounds in return for “protection”. .
. then threatening Berbatov’s wife and daughter, once she refused. .
. The player, aware of what would come next, began contacting everyone he could but unfortunately for him, he was quickly advised not to call the authorities… as the Bulgarian Internal Affairs Ministry was likely in on the kidnapping scheme… So with no options left, he asked Sir Alex himself to loan him his private jet and fled to Bulgaria, in order to get his relatives somewhere safe… but not before taking a detour and facing the mafia by himself… again, not much is known of what happened there, aside from the fact that his family never get hurt, and that he also never paid them a dime… Still, among all of this, Sir Alex, though empathetic with his struggles, began getting more and more frustrated… In fact, it was only thanks to second coach, Rene Meulensteen, that we got to see him hit his prime… The Dutch saw something Sir Alex couldn’t, he once even told him Berbatov “wasn’t actually a footballer, he was an artist who happened to wear football boots”. .
. It was actually a conversation Meulesnteen had with Berbatov, that got him in the headspace he needed to be in order to succeed… You see, Berbatov often got upset the team didn’t play to his tune, so Meulensteen told him “You’re like the best pianist in the world, but you see those guys out there in the training pitch, they’re the world’s greatest orchestra and they have a maestro who worked very hard to get them to play like this… The only difference is that you play at a different tempo, match theirs and you’ll win everything”. .
. And against all odds, following this turbulent year, in 2010/2011, at 30 years of age, the player Fergie would eventually compare to Cantona, finally found his place in the team…. He started the year with 7 goals in 6 matches, all culminating in a clutch hat trick against Liverpool, the first from a man united player in over 64 years, one of the greatest premier league performances ever and one which included an overhead kick that was a goal of the season contender….
And that was not even his best performance of the season, that would be his 5 goal demolition against Blackburn Rovers which meant Berbatov was just the 4th ever in history to get 5 goals in a Premier League and the first ever foreign player to accomplish this… And that season, despite frequently not being afforded the 90 minutes, much thanks to these moments of genius I have mentioned, Berbatov still sealed his spot as the Premier League’s top scorer with 20 goals and 4 assists in just 22 hundred minutes of football… No wonder, United took the league trophy and Berbatov a place in the league’s team of the season… No matter what you may wanna say about his performances, Berbatov had been a difference maker, you’d expect Sir Alex to rely on him for the biggest of matches… he was the premier league top scorer, he deserved that kind of responsibility… but then, when United made it to the Champions League final once again… leaving Berbatov on the brink of what could’ve been his crowning moment… Sir Alex made a decision that completely changed the course of his career… I know you expect me to tell you he benched him… but it was worse, he wasn’t even called up… On the greatest season of his career, with a third chance at finally taking the biggest trophy of all, Berbatov wasn’t even given the chance and watched from home as United lost the match… this was a reflection of his status in the team, no matter his achievements, he had an awkward role… Despite all of this, despite clearly being hurt by Ferguson’s decision, he stayed at the club, but that only made it worse… because that final was the first step towards a new playing style Ferguson wanted to implement… he wanted them to be quicker than ever and Berbatov was clearly out of place… Berbatov was a vintage footballer, born a decade or two too late… A year after the final, he had only played 12 more league matches for United, and so Ferguson told him he wouldn’t count on him for the following season… it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that he left without even saying goodbye to his coach…though that wouldn’t be the last time he’d meet Sir Alex… Despite links to Bayern, Juventus, Fiorentina and even a comeback to Tottenham, at the request of his old coach Martin Jol, he instead opted for a quiet time at Fulham… Then came Monaco, PAOK and some time in India before Berbatov called it quits and began working on his autobiography… It took a lot of guts to confront him again, but once the book was done, he went to Ferguson and asked if he could write the foreword… to his surprise he said yes without thinking twice… A few weeks later the manuscript arrived… Berbatov couldn’t believe his eyes… In the text, Ferguson apologized for depriving of his crowning moment, admitted he should’ve called him up for the final and like many others, left the question hanging: What would’ve happened if Berbatov was there?
