In October 2019, England’s national football team played what should have been a humdrum European Championship qualifying match against Bulgaria in Sofia, the country’s capital. But the match soon made headlines for all the wrong reasons, being stopped twice because of racist abuse from a section of Bulgarian fans. What’s more, the match served as an unfortunate window into Bulgaria’s radical right, where the hateful actions of the furthest fringes tend to be tolerated, downplayed or even ignored.
During the match at Sofia’s Vasil Levski Stadium on October 14 – where a large section of the stadium was already closed off after racist incidents in June – a section of Bulgarian supporters made Nazi salutes and hurled monkey chants at black England players. Fans were warned that the match could be abandoned if the behaviour persisted. The apparent culprits left the stadium before halftime, not bothering to stick around and see the Bulgarian side fall to one of their worst-ever home defeats.
The individuals behind the chanting and Nazi salutes were, not surprisingly, linked to Bulgaria’s radical right, neo-Nazi fringes. As journalist Vivek Chaudhary wrote in The Guardian, the perpetrators of the abuse were identified as members of “Lauta Army,” a neo-Nazi hooligan firm associated with Lokomotiv Plovdiv. Lauta Army has connections with other neo-Nazi hooligan firms across Europe; two years ago, Chaudhary reports, Lauta Army “celebrated its 25th anniversary by taking over a Black Sea resort for three days with far-right groups from Italian club Napoli, Spartak Moscow and Bulgarian club Levski Sofia.”
