Full name | Professional football club Cherno More Varna |
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Nickname(s) | Моряците (The Sailors) |
Short name | Cherno More |
Founded | 3 March 1913 |
Ground | Ticha Stadium |
Capacity | 8,250 |
Owner | Chimimport AD |
Chairman | Marin Marinov |
Head coach | Georgi Ivanov |
League | Bulgarian First League |
2015–16 | A Group, 6th |
Website | chernomorepfc |
PFC Cherno More Varna (Bulgarian: ПФК Черно Море Варна), or simply Cherno More (Bulgarian: ФК Черно Море) is a Bulgarian professional association football club based in the city of Varna, which currently competes in Bulgaria's primary football competition, the First League. Founded on March 3, 1913, as an association football branch of the larger sports society SC Galata, the club has spent the majority of its existence playing in the top tier of Bulgarian football.
Cherno More is named after the Black Sea, and the football club is also known by its nickname The Sailors. Cherno More's home ground is the Ticha Stadium, which has a seating capacity of 8,250 spectators, with plans to move to a new all-seater stadium in late 2018. As one of the successful clubs in Bulgarian football outside the capital Sofia, the Sailors have won the Bulgarian championship on four different occasions and the Bulgarian Cup once in 2015.
The club has a long-standing rivalry with neighbouring Spartak Varna, with matches between the two being commonly referred to as "The Derby of Varna".
Оn March 3, 1913, Galata Sports Association was established in the male first high school in Varna, with association football being one of its departments. Later in 1913, Karel Škorpil, one of the founding members of the sports society and a prominent Czech-Bulgarian archaeologist, who settled in Varna at that time, suggested the association to be renamed to Reka Ticha, in homage of the old name of the Kamchiya river. On May 24, 1914 Sportist Sports Club, which was formed by Stefan Tonchev and a group of boys in 1909, joined Reka Ticha. Many Cherno More supporters today consider the officially acknowledged founding year 1913 to be historically incorrect, believing that SC Sportist's year of establishment in 1909 should be acknowledged as the year of establishment of Cherno More. Several years later, the first international friendly in Bulgarian club football history was played in 1915 between Reka Ticha and the 21st Pomeranian Regiment of Prussia, which ended in a 4-4 draw. In 1919, Reka Ticha began playing matches against different teams from the capital Sofia, which ended in a success with scores of 3-0 and 1-0 against Slavia Sofia on a home-away basis and a 4-1 win against Levski Sofia in Varna. The away match with Levski in Sofia however did not take place. The subsequent growth of Bulgarian football required knowledge of the rules, and as such, in 1919, the football department of SC Reka Ticha published the first Bulgarian football rulebook titled "Football - Rules and Admonitions". It was written by the sports functionary and Reka Ticha's member Stefan Tonchev.