Northern Ireland: Michael O’Neill’s players ‘stepping into unknown’ in Bulgaria says Warren Feeney

Thirty years on from reaching the World Cup semi-finals with a team spearheaded by Hristo Stoichkov, Bulgarian football has fallen on hard times of late.

While it was not so long ago that they could call on the likes of Dimitar Berbatov – the former Manchester United and Tottenham striker played his youth football at Feeney’s old side Pirin – Martin and Stylian Petrov, Illian Illiev’s current squad does not possess the star power of old.

After Thursday’s 0-0 draw with Belarus, their only win in their last 16 games came against Tanzania and they finished bottom of their group in qualifying for Euro 2024.

Feeney, though, warns against underestimating their ability.

“When they finished fourthth at in the World Cup, they had some of the world’s greatest players at that time, [Hristo] Stoichkov, [Yordan] Letchkov. A lot of their players were out of the country, playing in Germany and Italy.

“But you just have to look at the [domestic] football as well. Remember Ludogorets, who are one of the top teams out there, beat Crusaders 9-0 [on aggregate in the Champions League qualifiers of 2018].

“It is a big football country with very good players. You can’t underestimate Bulgarian football. It can be a lot slower, but they’re technically very, very good players.

“In my team I had players who had been playing for Aston Villa, Fulham, Dynamo Moscow, PSV. Top, top players.”