All Bulgarian Teams Out of Europa League

0 Players of Steaua Bucharest celebrate after scoring a goal against CSKA Sofia during their UEFA Europa League play off second leg soccer match in Sofia, Bulgaria, 25 August 2011. EPA/BGNES

Bulgarian football champions Litex Lovech and Cup holders CSKA Sofia both failed to enter the Europa League tournament, as they lost on aggregate to Dinamo Kyiv and Steaua Bucharest respectively.

Litex suffered their fourth consecutive defeat in European tournament games as they lost to Ukrainian giants in Kyiv. Artem Milevski scored the only goal in the 74th minute, The Bulgarian squad had already failed to qualify for the Champions League group stage after losing twice to Polish Wisla Krakow.

The other Bulgarian team who played on Thursday, CSKA, managed to pull off a draw against Steaua at home but lost 1:3 on aggregate. Brazilian striker Michel Platini equalized in the 83th minute after Cristian Tanase had scored for the Romanian squad.

CSKA's archrivals Levski Sofia was eliminated from the tournament already the previous round after a dramatic penalty shootout against Slovakia's Spartak Trnava. Lokomotiv Sofia was also defeated in the previous round.

Thus, for the first time in years, 2011 saw no Bulgarian clubs reaching the group stage in neither the Champions League nor Europa League.

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