On the Issue of the Formation of Football Infrastructure in Sofia in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries

Abstract

One of the main components of the football industry today is its infrastructure. Training facilities, stadiums with stands for spectators, sports bases, retail outlets, museums of various teams and clubs all play key roles in the sport. In Britain, such amenities began to appear in the first half of the 19th century, in continental Western Europe — around the mid-1800s, and in the central and eastern parts of the Old World — even later, at the turn of the 20th century. The development of football infrastructure in Sofia is an illustrative example not only in the context of one city or country, but also for the region as a whole. Since in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the capital of Bulgaria saw the formation of traditions which determined the subsequent development of the city’s sports infrastructure, through this case study we can trace from where the complex of ideas related to establishing suitable sports facilities spread to Bulgaria and Southeastern Europe, how the process of formation and accumulation of knowledge in this specialized sphere unfolded, and how such facilities were actually built. The initiative to set up sports grounds belonged to Bulgarian educational institutions and societies, and such projects were financed by club members. The social groups that played the decisive role in the transfer of knowledge to the sports industry, namely to the construction of football playing grounds, were local youth with the experience of studies abroad and foreign teachers who worked in Bulgaria. The main routes of diffusion of this type of information originated in Switzerland and the Ottoman Empire. It was from these countries that the capital of the Balkan state received knowledge about the existing norms and rules for the construction of football fields. However, unlike in other European cities during this period, the sports infrastructure in Sofia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries did not yet become a component of business projects aiming to make a profit from renting out such facilities or from selling tickets to football fans.