Just a week after the end of the biggest football event – the World Cup in Brazil, the first round of the Bulgarian A Football Group, season 2014-2015, started. Unfortunately, the new championship promises to follow old patterns. The reasons for such expectations are many. The Bulgarian football champion from the past few years Ludogorets started with a 0-1 loss against a team from Southeastern Bulgaria. This time it was the team of Haskovo to win against the champions. The biggest Sofia rivals also continue to be plagued by old problems – CSKA lacks finances, while Levski keeps playing sterile football.

Bulgarian teams in European club competitions perform in a well-known way, too. Ludogorets will almost certainly overcome its first obstacle – the Luxembourg team of Dudelange, in order to face once again Serbian Partizan. Fans hope Ludogorets will succeed this year. All three Bulgarian representatives in the Europa League, to put it mildly, were not particularly convincing in their first matches of the second qualifying round against modest rivals. CSKA managed to reach the 1-1 draw at home against Moldovan Zimbru and Litex suffered shameful 0-2 home defeat by Diosgyori (Hungary). The team of Botev Plovdiv was not very convincing too but reached the victory against the modest Austrian team of St. Pölten. In case of success after the second match Botev will face a very serious obstacle - Dutch PSV-Eindhoven. However, during the past season Ludogorets proved that the old glory of the Philips is in the past.

Otherwise, the new football championship started according to last year’s scheme. The championship is divided into two stages and teams are 12, two less than before. In the first stage of 22 rounds each team must play two times against the other teams on a home-away basis. In the second stage the teams will be divided into two groups of six teams which are to play twice with each of their respective group rivals. Regardless of the results in the first round, we can boldly predict that the top group after the first stage is unlikely to be much different from last year's group of teams that played for the top positions.

With even greater certainty we can predict that the attractive games will be few, especially after fans got used to watching the matches of the World Cup, which were full of goals. This is evidenced by the fact that only the team of Slavia, which won 4-1 against Marek at home, managed to score more than one goal at the start of the new championship. Two of the top teams from last year deserve admiration for their will to win. CSKA won as guest to "Litex" in Lovech while Botev Plovdiv reached the victory against Lokomotiv Sofia with a penalty. The other two matches - Levski vs. Lokomotiv (Plovdiv) and Beroe vs Cherno More ended in 1:1 draws.

English: Alexander Markov