I Thought A Rival Club Would Kill Me If I Didn’t Sign – Berbatov

Former Manchester United striker Dimitar Berbatov has shared a frightening ordeal from the very early days of his career back home in Bulgaria. The forward recently revealed that he once believed he was being kidnapped by a rival club and was about to be threatened with violence if he refused to join them.

According to him, he was so intimidated during what was supposed to be a transfer meeting that he thought he would be beaten up badly if he refused to say yes.

Berbatov added that the terrifying situation was eventually resolved, but it made him realise he needed to grow up fast.

His words, “I was really showing what I can do on the pitch, really starting to show my qualities.

Normally, when you show your quality as a player, teams will come for you, submit offers, ask how long you have as a contract, how much do you cost to buy, and stuff like that. Back home was more different. Back home was like, ‘Him? All right, bring him here.

After training, I didn’t have a car. So a team-mate of mine, he was like, ‘Come with me, I need to bring you to a friend of mine.’

I was a bit naive, of course. Maybe I trusted him because we played in the same team.

So I got into his car. He drove me to a restaurant. We got into the restaurant, and in the restaurant there were obviously tables.

On one table, there was a guy by himself. On three other tables, there were big guys – refrigerators – typical Balkan guys sitting behind him, just looking and watching you scarily.

“The guy who brought me there was like, ‘Go over there, sit, I’ll see you later.'” he said. “The [other] guy was like, ‘Come here, sit down.’ I’m sitting down, and it’s like, thinking to myself in my mind, ‘What is going on? I need to call my dad.’ The guy started talking, ‘Do you know what they call me? They call me the cook’.

‘We know about you. We need to change the team. We want you in our team. We need to get you.’

I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I’m playing in CSKA Sofia. I mean, I like it there.’ ‘We will figure that out. Don’t worry about it.’ The guys were sitting there and I’m just intimidated and thinking, ‘I need to call my dad.’

So maybe two, three hours sitting there, and in the end, the guy let me call my dad, saying ‘I’m here. I don’t know where I am. The people around me, big guys.'”

I was talking [to my dad] really fast, and he’s like, ‘Calm down, breathe.’ I’m like, ‘What the f***? They’re going to kidnap me here and I don’t want to go, I want to go home.’

And he’s like, ‘OK, OK. Let me see what I can do. I’ll call the guy.’ So eventually someone calls someone, and the big bosses of the two teams figure out a way of me not moving, just staying where I was.

In that situation, 18 years old, seeing and knowing how things were done back then in Bulgaria, I was thinking to myself, this is it for me.

I need to say yes, or maybe they’re going to beat me, or I don’t know. But eventually my dad came in and took me in the car, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It made me realise I need[ed] to grow up quickly and be a man really early in my stage of life.”

WOW.