The Bears played a historic game in Belgrade

On November 18, the Sofia Bears played their first match in Belgrade, home to some of the strongest Serbian teams. The Bears were visiting the local team Zemun Highlanders.

After arriving in Belgrade, the bears had enough time to devastate all the pleskavitsa in the vicinity of the hotel, walk around the old part of the city and chat with the local heavily equipped policemen, who in turn thought they were fans of one of the teams from the local derby, which took place the same day between Red Star and Partizan.

Going to bed early played a bad joke on some of the bears, who were extremely pleasantly surprised by the visit of their former coach and godfather of the club – Thomas Sadowski. The American was on business in Belgrade and a randomly posted photo on Facebook reunited him with his favorite team. So the Bears found a coach for the next day, due to the absence of head coach Ivo Ikonomov.

The wonderful Sunday weather foreshadowed a real good and attractive derby. The “Highlanders” from the Belgrade district of Zemun had prepared to show the Bulgarians that they had no chance of winning in Serbia and obviously started the game with a dose of disdain for our team.

The bears, for their part, were highly motivated to prove to the Serbs what they were capable of.

From the beginning of the match it was clear that it would not be an easy victory. The Bulgarian attack was stopped, and the subsequent punt failed and the Serbs began their first drive on the Bulgarian 20-yard line. It is no coincidence that the Bulgarians have not allowed a point since the beginning of the year (total score of 4 games – 183 to 0). The brutal defense of the Bulgarians literally crushed any hopes of the Serbs to advance even for a first down. The Serbian quarterback was so pressed by the defense that his passes did not even reach his receivers. Gradually, the game began to tilt in favor of the Bulgarians, but they managed to score only towards the end of the first quarter. By the end of the half, the result was eloquent – 14 to 0. The Bulgarians could have led by more, but they took a total of about 100 yards of different penalties and had 3 touchdowns called back by the end of the game.

In the second half the Bulgarians' dominance was obvious, but the many penalties simply ruled out more points.

The heartfelt game of the whole team brought the so coveted victory against a real rival of the rank of the Bears.

The Serbs, however, are determined to change the status quo as early as December 2 when they will visit Sofia to try to break the Bears again. The match will be played at the NSA, so come along to support the Bulgarian team.