Hristo Botev Stadium, Football stadium in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
Hristo Botev Stadium is a football venue in Blagoevgrad with a natural grass pitch designed to international standards and floodlighting installed around the field. The facility can hold about 7,500 spectators and features separate entrances for home and visiting fans along with multiple concession areas.
Built in 1934 with a single wooden-bench stand, the stadium first hosted top-flight Bulgarian matches in 1973 after Pirin joined the A Group. A new stand opposite the main one was then erected; in its first match, against Slavia, 17,000 spectators attended and the structure swayed under the crowd's pressure. On 2 June 1993 it hosted the Bulgarian Cup final between CSKA and Botev Plovdiv, watched by 18,000, the most attended football match in Blagoevgrad.
Pirin fans call the ground "Mitichniya" ("the Mythical"), a nickname used by the "eagles" supporters. The stadium's record crowd came on 2 June 1993, when 18,000 watched the Bulgarian Cup final between CSKA and Botev Plovdiv, 10,000 of them from Plovdiv.
The main stand is fully seated with 6,000 places, while the guest sector holds 1,000 and a 500-person buffer zone separates the two. The south stand was demolished in 2008, leaving a capacity of 7,500 after the away and buffer sectors were created. The pitch was relaid with a modern drainage and irrigation system during the 2009–2010 renovation.
Floodlights only arrived in September 2012, not 2010 — the 2010 renovation covered the pitch, drainage, irrigation and a new electronic scoreboard. Fans call the ground "Mitichniya" ("the Mythical"), a nickname for the home of Pirin's "eaglets".
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