St 6
“Do not be a pussy”, “You should do everything for the team.” “your personal life comes second”.
St 3
I was a fan of the XXXX and went to almost all the football matches. The fans back then were very violent after the games and during the match, we exchanged hate slogans. After a match, I lost my friends and I was confronted by a group of fans of the opposite team. […] I tried to get away but they surrounded me. They swore me and I tried to escape […] I ended up in hospital. My friends and fellow fans came to visit.
Story 11
The event took place in 2005 at the Sofia University mini-football tournament for students. Our team consisted of students mainly from the Faculty XXXX, where I studied XXXX. In the group stage of the tournament, our team met a team composed mainly of students from the Faculty of YYYY. In the second half, the game became rough and there was a fight between the two teams. There were insults, threats and hate speech all the time. The hate speech continued after the game in the following months. In the end, the referee stopped the match and neither team received points.
St 8
It’s about an event related to the amateur football team XXXX, which existed until the 2015/2016 season in the XXXX Amateur Football Group. One of our players was a Syrian named XXXX, who has lived in Bulgaria for a long time and has his own business. He is passionate about football and with pleasure and on a voluntary basis joined the revival and existence of the team until the 2015/2016 season. In the second half of the season (in the spring), however, he was systematically insulted and very often fouled by opposing teams. In addition, at almost every game we played (especially as guests), he was insulted on ethnic and racial grounds by the public. The public in this level of Bulgarian football is mostly local people waiting for such sporting events to show contempt towards others, especially towards foreigners and minorities. We had to change our player several times in order to finish the match.
St 6
I have witnessed in a couple of times situations, related with hate speech. I will share about the last one, because it shows perfectly that some things didn’t change that much in time. It happened after a female football game for the Bulgarian Cup. The home team lost the game and this was crucial for the reaction of the fans on the stand. They didn’t stop insulting the girls on the pitch from the beginning, but losing the game made them even more angry and aggressive, not only verbally, but also physically. The players of both teams were also very tense and they have said and done things that they didn’t want to.