PFC Litex Lovech

Litex Lovech

Full name	PFC Litex Lovech AD
Nickname(s)	The Oranges
Short name	Litex
Founded	1921
Ground	Lovech Stadium, Lovech (Capacity: 7,050)
Owner	Grisha Gantchev
Chairman	Trifon Popov
Manager	Petko Petkov
League	TBI A Football Group
2009–10	TBI A Football Group, 1st
Home colours Away colours Third colours

PFC Litex Lovech (Bulgarian: ПФК Литекс Ловеч) or simply Litex (Bulgarian: Литекс) is a Bulgarian football club from the town of Lovech, which currently competes in the Bulgarian A Professional Football Group, the top division of Bulgarian football. The club's home ground is the Lovech Stadium, which has a capacity of 7,050 seats, electric floodlights and permission to stage European matches. To date, Litex has won the championship three times and has won the Bulgarian Cup four times. Together with CSKA Sofia and Levski Sofia, Litex is the third Bulgarian football club that represents the country in the European Club Association.

Honours

Bulgarian A PFG:

• Champions (3) – 1997–98, 1998–99, 2009–10
• Runners-up (1) – 2001-02
• Third (2) – 2002-03, 2005-06

Bulgarian Cup:

• Winners (4) – 2001, 2004, 2008, 2009
• Runners-up (3) – 1999, 2003, 2007

Bulgarian League Cup:

• Runners-up (1) – 1997

Bulgarian Supercup

• Winners (1) - 2010
• Runners-up (4) – 2004, 2007, 2008 , 2009

Norcia Winter Cup

• Winners (1) – 2001

History

The club was founded in 1921 as Hisarya and began playing league football during 1923. Over the years, the club has changed its name several times. From 1957 named Karpachev, before becoming Osam in 1979. Under that name the club played constantly in the B PFG, the second division of Bulgarian football and was close to promotion several times. A notable star during this period was Plamen Linkov who broke the club's appearance record, playing 575 times, scoring 167 goals.

In 1990 sponsor of the team become a company LEX. In the same year, the club had changed its name to LEX Football Club. The 1993–94 season was successful for LEX, which finished 1st in second division and qualified for the A PFG for first time in the club's history. The first season in the A PFG was a success for a club like LEX, finishing 11th after victories against teams of the likes of CSKA Sofia (1:0), Slavia Sofia (1:0) and Lokomotiv Sofia (1:0).

The next season was not successful and the club, renamed Lovech, was relegated to the second division. This was the turning point in the history of the club, when the petrol businessman and citizen of Lovech Grisha Ganchev bought the football club and renamed it to Litex.

Litex's A PFG trophy in 1998.

The following season almost all of the current players were released and a significant number of valuable players were signed. As expected, the team won the Bulgarian B PFG without difficulty, finishing more than 10 points ahead of the second team in the table, and the team was promoted back to the A PFG. At that short spell in the second division, Litex surprisingly reached the quarter-final of the Bulgarian Cup and the final of the Bulgarian League Cup, which was lost after a 2:2 draw in the regular time and a 5:3 in the penalty shoot-out. Also, Litex won all of its matches against the teams from the top 5 of the table of the Bulgarian A PFG (either in friendly matches or cup matches).

In 1997, Litex was promoted for the second time to the top division and immediately became Bulgarian champions, finishing the season 5 points ahead of the second-placed Levski Sofia. This was unprecedented in Bulgarian football history. The striker of the team Dimcho Belyakov became top goalscorer with his 21 goals scored during the season. The midfielder Stoycho Stoilov received the Best League Player award. The club's first participation in the European club tournaments was also promising, with Litex eliminating the Swedish Halmstads BK (2:0 and 1:2) and reaching the second qualifying round (but being knocked out by Russian powerhouse Spartak Moscow). The club also won the championship for the second time a year later.

Litex with the Bulgarian Cup in 2009.

In the recent years, Litex won the Bulgarian Cup four times, in 2001 (a 1:0 win against Velbazhd Kyustendil after extra time), in 2004 (a win over CSKA after a 2:2 in the regular time and a penalty shootout), in 2008 a win over Cherno More Varna (1:0) and in 2009 against Pirin Blagoevgrad (3:0 in the regular time). Litex is also the team, which inflicted the biggest defeat of CSKA Sofia, 8:0 in Lovech, in the first half of the 1998/99 season. In early August, 2007, Litex signed a three-year sponsorship and advertising contract with Bulgarian mobile operator GLOBUL and started the 2007/08 season with the logo of the mobile service i-mode on the team's kits. In December, 2007, Litex became the first Bulgarian club to have branded a mobile phone game, Litex Football. Before the start of the 2008/09 season, Litex lost the Bulgarian Supercup final with 0:1 from CSKA Sofia. The winning goal for the army team was scored by Kiril Kotev in the 65th minute. After a season later, Litex again lost the Bulgarian Supercup with 0:1 from CSKA Sofia's city rival and current champion at that time Levski Sofia.

In 2009–10 season Litex became a champion of Bulgaria for the third time in his history^[1].

League positions

European Cups history

This is a list of the recent matches of Litex in Europe:

Season	Competition	Round	Country	Club	Home	Away	Aggregate
2005/06	UEFA Cup	Round of 32		Strasbourg	0–2	0–0	0–2
2006/07	UEFA Cup	1Q		Koper	5–0	1–0	6–0
		2Q		Omonia	2–1	0–0	2–1
		1		Maccabi Haifa	1–3	1–1	2–4
2007/08	UEFA Cup	1Q		Sliema Wanderers	4–0	3–0	7–0
		2Q		Besa Kavajë	3–0	3–0	6–0
		1		Hamburg	0–1	1–3	1–4
2008/09	UEFA Cup	2Q		Hapoel Ironi Kiryat Shmona	0–0	2–1	2–1
		1		Aston Villa	1–3 [2]	1–1 [3]	2–4
2009/10	UEFA Europa League	Play-off		FC BATE	0–4 (aet)	1–0	1–4
2010/11	UEFA Champions League	2Q		FK Rudar Pljevlja	1–0[4]	4–0	5–0
		3Q		MŠK Žilina	1–1	1–3	2–4
2010/11	UEFA Europa League	Play-off Round		Debreceni VSC	1–2	0–2	1–4

Stadium

Lovech Stadium

Litex Lovech's home ground is the Lovech Stadium, a football stadium in Lovech. Built in 1962, the ground underwent a total reconstruction in 1999 and was brought to a suitable stand to host international matches in 1999. It has approximately 7,050 seats with pitch dimensions of 105 x 68 metres. The record attendance is 12,500 for the game against Levski Sofia in 19 April, 1998. The record attendance in the European club competitions was achieved against Aston Villa F.C. on September 18, 2008, when around 8,000 spectators supported the team. In the summer of 2010, a massive reconstruction of the venue was started, new side sectors with roof covers were built and the media sectors were expanded in order to meet the UEFA guidelines for Champions League matches. On July 12, 2010, the stadium officially received from UEFA a 3-star rating.

Current squad

As of August 10, 2010

Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player 1 GK Uroš Golubović 2 DF Alexandre Barthe 3 DF Petar Zanev 4 DF Džemal Berberović 5 DF Mihail Venkov 6 MF Ivaylo Petkov 7 MF Hristo Yanev 8 MF Tom 9 FW Svetoslav Todorov 10 MF Sandrinho 11 FW Florin Bratu (on loan from Dinamo Bucureşti) 15 MF Doka Madureira

No. Position Player 16 MF Strahil Popov 17 MF Georgi Milanov 18 DF Iliya Milanov 19 FW Wilfried Niflore 21 DF Aleksandar Tsvetkov 22 DF Plamen Nikolov 23 MF Nebojša Jelenković 27 FW Momchil Tsvetanov 30 GK Evgeni Aleksandrov 31 GK Vinícius Barrivieira (on loan from Atlético-PR) 33 DF Nikolay Bodurov

On loan

Note: Flags indicate national team as has been defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.

No. Position Player DF Emil Grozev (at Brestnik 1948) DF Tsvetomir Panov (at Vidima-Rakovski)

No. Position Player MF Ventsislav Bengyuzov (at Brestnik 1948) MF Maksim Stoykov (at Brestnik 1948)

For recent transfers, see List of Bulgarian football transfers summer 2010.

Notable players

The following players included were either playing for their respective national teams or left good impression among the fans.

Note: For a complete list of Litex Lovech players, see Category:PFC Litex Lovech players.

Managerial history

This is a list of the recent Litex Lovech managers:

Name	Nat	From	To	Honours
Ferario Spasov		October 2000	August 2003	1 Bulgarian Cup
Dragoljub Simonović		August 2003	February 2004	–
Ljupko Petrović		February 2004	May 2004	1 Bulgarian Cup
Stoycho Mladenov		June 2004	November 2004	–
Itzhak Shum		January 2005	May 2005	–
Ljupko Petrović		June 2005	May 2007	–
Ferario Spasov		June 2007	November 2007	–
Miodrag Ješić		November 2007	May 2008	1 Bulgarian Cup
Stanimir Stoilov		June 2008	September 2009	1 Bulgarian Cup
Angel Chervenkov		September 2009	August 2010	1 Bulgarian A PFG
Petko Petkov		August 2010	forward	1 Bulgarian Supercup

As of May 16, 2010.

Notable stats

Most appearances for the club # Name Apps 1 Plamen Linkov 575 2 Nebojša Jelenković 265 3 Vitomir Vutov 245 4 Zhivko Zhelev 225 5 Nikolay Dimitrov 210 Most goals for the club # Name Gls 01 Plamen Linkov 167 02 Stefan Yurukov 084 03 Svetoslav Todorov 058 04 Hristo Yovov 054 05 Dimcho Belyakov 048

Bulgarian league top scorer with the club Year Name Gls 1999 Dimcho Belyakov 21 2000 Svetoslav Todorov 19 2001 Hristo Yovov 17 2006 Milivoje Novakovič 16 2010 Wilfried Niflore 19

Notes:

• Bold signals active players
• Correct as of 2010-05-16

References

External links

Official websites

• (Bulgarian) (English) Official website
• (English) UEFA Profile

Supporters website

• (Bulgarian) National supporters website