Ludogorets finished its participation in a strong international tournament without a loss

Ludogorets players finished their participation in the strong and prestigious International Youth Football Tournament Football Friends without a loss. It was held at the end of last week in the town of Foca in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The debut performance of the young 16 and 17-year-old Eagles in the competition was more than successful and remarkable. They were led by head coach Martin Tsirkov, mentor Emiliyan Petrov, goalkeeper coach Zdravko Chavdarov and conditioning coach Sergey Surov.

Thanks to the self-giving of the players, their talent and demonstrated football qualities, Ludogorets finished as the only participant without conceding a goal in their goal. Guard of Razgrad Valentin Valentinov, who managed to keep a clean sheet, was named the best goalkeeper of the tournament. Maxim Minkov became the top scorer of the competition.

The prestigious tournament pitted against each other 8 strong and leading teams in their countries: Ludogorets, the hosts Sutjeska Foca from the Bosnian Republika Srpska, Zeljeznicar (Sarajevo), the Serbian team Crvena Zvezda, the Croatian team Rijeka, the juniors of Buducnost from Montenegro, the young footballers from Akademija Pandev in North Macedonia, the Serbian team Vojvodina. For three days each of them played one match in pursuit of the first place.

The excellent performance of the people of Razgrad and their two wins against Sutjeska Foca and Zeljeznicar took them to the final, which took place late last night. In it, the talents of the Bulgarian champions took to the field against Crvena Zvezda. The strong and fighting game provided a number of goal situations for Ludogorets, but they failed to take advantage of the good opportunities created and leave as leaders. After the expiration of regular time, no final winner was broadcast and everything was decided by the execution of penalties Alexander Valekov, Hristo Totov, Svetlin Kralev and Chris Ivanov were involved in Crvena Zvezda. The guard of Ludogorets Valentin Valentinov twice managed to shake the Serbian players and keep his net dry match broadcast as the winner of the 18th edition of the International Tournament, the team of Crvena Zvezda with a total final score of 5:6.

"I and the entire coaching team thank the management of PFC Ludogorets for the opportunity to participate in such a strong international tournament, part of our preparation for the upcoming season. We had a chance to face strong and leading teams in their countries. This is a very important and valuable international experience for us as coaches, for the individual development of the players, as well as for the team as a whole. I am satisfied with the performance of the players, at no point did we concede to these strong teams, we even managed to outplay them for a large part. Of course, there is also a slight disappointment that we were so close to victory and leaving as champions", shared the emotions of the participation of Ludogorets head coach Martin Tsirkov.