1994: The Great World Cup
If you are Bulgarian and you hear the year 1994 you have to think of only thing- the World Cup, or the Great World Cup, as I like to call it. The Great World Cup was the greatest achievement of Bulgarain football. It was the year that we finished fourth in a World Cup, our best result to date, and possibly our best result ever- well unless every other team on the world gets ubducted by aliens during a World Cup and Bulgaria is the only country that can win.
I was in the car with my parents and they were telling about the World Cup. Since you, imaginary reader, have probably never heard of the Bulgarian story I will tell you. So sit back and relax.
Few people believed that we had a chance to qualify. If we wanted to make it France had to lose to Israel and then we had to win our last match against France in Paris. All this seemed unlikely, until France lost to Israel. So our boys get on a bus and go to Paris. They play there and the score at 89th minute is 1-1, a score which gets France the ticket to the World Cup in America, and a score that sends Bulgaria back to, well, Bulgaria (duh). But lets no get ahead of ourselves. Emil Kostadinov, who scored the only goal for Bulgaria in the game decided it was time to do something in the 90the minute and scored. The goal made the commentators' remark "God is Bulgarian" famous throughout the country. All 50,000 people in the stadium at Paris were stunned as white-out covered France's name on their plane ticket to America and replaced it with Bulgaria.
The Bulgarian boys got to America and found themselves in a group with Nigeria and Argentina. Nigeria seemed an easy task, until they beat us 3-0. Then they were stopped by the great Argentina, who had to play the Bulgarian next. Bulgaria won the match and got past the group stages. Then some unimportant matches were played and then we got to the quarter finals. There we had a tough task ahead of us- Germany. We beat them 2-1 and proceeded to the semis.
The Americans were starting to worry now. They didn't want Bulgaria to make it to the finals because no one wanted to see a team that no one's heard of play at the finals, which meant they won't be able to fill their stadiums. So as we faced out next task, Italy they decided to be all meanie and screw with us. They gave us a French referee. The French, of course hated us because we are the reason they weren't at the World Cup. There are many Bulgarians that blame the referee for our loss of the match 2-1, but I don't. Being Bulgarian I know that there is one thing that we can't do- which is win at big tournaments.
Eventually, Brazil went on to win their 1437643627 title over penalty shout-outs with Italy. I don't regret that we didn't win. Of course it would have been nice to win, but I do regret that I was too little to remember this. It was probably the most amazing feeling ever, and I could just imagine how proud I would have been to be a Bulgarian.
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