Full name | Professional Football Club Litex Lovech |
---|---|
Nickname(s) | Оранжевите (The Oranges) |
Short name | Litex |
Founded | 1921 as Hisarya Sports Club |
Ground |
Lovech Stadium, Lovech |
Capacity | 8,100 |
Owner | Litex Commerce JSC |
Manager | Zhivko Zhelev |
League | Second League |
2016–17 | Third League, 1st /promoted/ |
Website | Club home page |
PFC Litex Lovech (Bulgarian: ПФК Литекс Ловеч) or simply Litex (Bulgarian: Литекс) is a Bulgarian professional association football club from the town of Lovech, which currently competes in the Bulgarian Third League. The club was founded in 1921 as Hisarya Football Club.
The club's home ground is the Lovech Stadium, which has a capacity of 8,100 seats, electric floodlights and permission to stage European matches. As one of the successful Bulgarian clubs outside the capital Sofia, Litex have won the domestic championship four times and the Bulgarian Cup on four different occasions. Together with CSKA Sofia and Levski Sofia, Litex was also the third football club to represent the country regularly in the European Club Association.
The club was founded in 1921 as Hisarya and began playing league football two years later, in 1923. Over the years, the club has changed its name several times. From 1957 it was named Karpachev, before becoming Osam in 1979. Under that name the club played constantly in the B Group, the second division of Bulgarian football and was near to promotion several times. A notable player during this period was Plamen Linkov, who broke the club's appearance record, playing 575 matches and scoring 167 goals respectively.
In 1990, after Bulgaria's transition to market economy, privately owned company LEX became the main sponsor of the club. During the same year, the new owners changed the name of the football club to LEX. The 1993–94 B Group proved to be impressive for the club, as the team finished first in the second division and qualified for the A Group, a notable milestone never done before in the club's history. LEX's debut season in the A Group was also noteworthy, as the team ranked 11th at the end of the season. The next season however proved to be unsuccessful and the club, renamed Lovech, was relegated to the B Group.