This man has eaten, breathed, slept and shat football since he was in knee pants. Unbelievably, he left a reasonably comfortable life at his parents' home in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, at the tender age of 12, to pursue the beginnings of his prodigious career. Since then, he's been voted the Best Bulgarian Footballer five times. Not to mention the fact that he's tallied 84 caps for his national team, and netted 37 of the team's goals.

Fortunately for the careers of his mates back home, he left Bulgaria in 1990 to teach the guys in Barcelona how to kick a ball (becoming Bulgaria's most expensive player at $4.5 million). For the past decade he's played for clubs from Italy to Japan, and led his teammates to untold victories, driven not only by the unquenchable desire to win, but by the need to become the best footballer he's capable of being. Which is, no doubt, the best there is.

Perhaps even more amazing than all of this (especially given his observation that there are so "few journalists here [in America] who live for soccer"), is the fact that he spent an entire hour of his life actually sitting down and chatting with us about, well, what else? Football, of course. Bear in mind that this is a Saturday morning, and he's busting his ass on an exercise bike and a treadmill at the crack of dawn, watching videotapes of himself in old Barcelona matches. There's no weekend lounging in the pool, recovering from the Friday night piss-up, watching late morning cartoons and getting as fat as a baseball pitcher.

This man's a fucking monster—pardon our Bulgarian. He looks to all the world like a cross between a bulldog and a meaner-than-hell-son-of-a-bitch. The surly kind of guy that you'd not want to look at cross-eyed. It's more than a mere piece of luck, however, that he's actually one of the most gracious and intelligent people we've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Luck certainly has little part in the life of a man who stresses "the fact that we have to work hard, not because we wear Fire kits, but because you have to earn your own personality. That doesn't mean you have to go out and break somebody's leg next time you face the opposition. It means that you have to come together and work hard." Behind that attitude is a lifetime of hard work and devotion to both football and the people who endeavor to play it. Hristo isn't some international show-boater coming to America for a chance to be the big man on the totem pole. He's come, as always, to work and to win. "It's very important for us [older, experienced players like myself and team captain Peter Novak] to have that mentality, to be that hard working, because the younger players are hungry for more."

Of course, it's one thing to hear him talk about the game; it's another to actually watch him play it. You'd think he was sent from another planet just to make the rest of us look like out-of-shape, clumsy fools. With a ball between his feet, he makes the Bolshoi Ballet look like a gang of gimpy midgets; and the way his left-footed blasts violate all laws of the space-time continuum would make Einstein soil himself. But in his no-bullshit, non-affected modesty he'll tell you otherwise: "I'm not a master of soccer. I've played for many years and I've learned a lot, but I still have something to look forward to each day. Like the video I was watching; I like going back and seeing what I did. I really think what I know, what I've learned, is enough to pass on to the younger players."

And a bloody godsend it is that he's passing on his formidable knowledge to the young gents in America. When Hristo Stoitchkov signed with Major League Soccer, there was much rejoicing, as well there should be when a fledgling football league lands one of the legends of the sport. A man among men, and a footballer of monumental stature. So why in hell is he wasting his time stateside?

Stoitchkov sums it up this way: "This is a collective sport. We have to help each other. We want to help the league. Those of us who've played for many years, especially with the national league, only want to help out. We have to make sure the league develops the right way and then keep going from there."

The man has already tamed the world; now he is offering us Yanks his wealth of insight into the world that is football. Consider this: "Soccer in Europe is very different. There are all sorts of differences between soccer over there and soccer over here. MLS is very young, but physically it's the same. There are eleven guys there and eleven guys here." Deceptively simple, yet right to the heart of the matter. Football is the world's sport.

The fact that it's taken this country hundreds of years to catch on may be a poor reflection on us, but it changes football not one iota. What European experience has to offer talented young American footballers is tradition, tactics and intensity that football in America just can't match. Yet. Stoitchkov's a staunch advocate of the younger American players training overseas, because, perhaps counterintuitively, it's actually good for the American leagues. After all, "training with first division teams is very important. If you go overseas and train there, then you gain valuable experience, and your mentality becomes stronger, and then you can bring that back. Europe has very good tactics physically, and that's why I like Bob [Bradley, Chicago Fire's head coach] so much. He's very knowledgeable in European play, he's very familiar with the teams, and he plans to incorporate that knowledge with the Fire. I feel like I'm training in Europe when I'm here. I don't feel much difference."

But there's more to learn from Europe than just the physical tactics and strategies. There are deeper infrastructural flaws in the American leagues that need serious fixing. The fact, for instance, that club matches still get played despite the fact a team's first side players are off on national club duty. "This is a problem because if you want to reach the [MLS] finals you have to have a team. They should come up with a system where there are pauses in the season so that you can go up and play the nationals and then come back. That's why we don't have people in the stands—because people know that the players are all with the National team. In Europe they stop the club matches."

Football, in Stoitchkov's vision, goes well beyond the twenty-two athletes on the pitch. It is, after all, a "collective sport," and in the broad scope, that includes the fans. Unfortunately, it's an attitude that's fairly uncommon in professional American athletics: Caring about the future and integrity of a sport, as well as the fans, rather than some multi-million dollar contract and a shoe endorsement. Stoitchkov isn't opening up his own chain of glitzy restaurants; he's opening football camps for kids. It's that kind of attitude that's needed for the sport to grow and flourish, not only in the States, but the world over. It's an attitude that reaches far beyond the confines of the mere physical athletics within sports; it encompasses the human dignity and inherent teamwork that makes any sport more than just individual wanking.

We don't think it would be unreasonable to say that what Hristo Stoitchkov wants, Hristo Stoitchkov gets. But it's obviously not because he's just some lucky, shiftless bastard. Stoitchkov has traveled the world for football, and what makes him such an unholy phenomenon-beyond his contributions and accomplishments as an experienced international player-is his passion for football. Even if football was not the most noble athletic endeavor ever conceived by sentient beings, even then, Hristo Stoitchkov's would be a remarkable passion. Few people can honestly say of their life's work, "It's a labor of love—it really doesn't matter, all the sacrifice." Few people can be so great and yet so humble. "I am not a master of soccer," he says. What a load of bull. He is, in fact, a guru-swami-poobah of soccer sitting atop a mountain of skill and hard work, and it is a transcendent experience to witness the ball bending to his will.

If you die without making it to Soldier Field to see this man kick a football, you're going straight to hell.

Also by Ben and Nathan Matteson

Mad for it
Heritage sometimes does strange things to Chicago fans.
(2000-06-08)