Scotland defender Liam Cooper's move to Bulgaria relied heavily on former Celtic star Stiliyan Petrov, according to CSKA Sofia technical director Filip Filipov.
The 33-year-old completed a shock move to CSKA after ten years at Leeds United and will become the first Scot at the club since Tony Watt was there for six months in 2019.
Cooper was introduced to Bulgarian fans in a video where he drove a Mini Cooper car with a voiceover stating, 'Legendary, classy, aggressive, emblematic, Cooper, Liam Cooper. We're switching gears.'
And Filipov revealed they enlisted the help of Bulgarian legend Petrov to make the move happen.
Read more:
- SPFL tribunal to decide compensation Rangers are due for Connor Barron
- Kevin Kyle backs Steven Naismith to see Hearts through rough patch
He said: "We are thrilled that we managed to attract such a good and classy footballer, with an incredible CV.
"I want to emphasise that Stiliyan Petrov helped us a lot to convince Liam that CSKA is a good place for him to continue his career.
"For this transfer window, our aim was to build a foundation and have a balance in the squad.
"Liam liked the city, he liked the good weather, which he doesn't have in England. It feels a good fit.
"I think that Liam Cooper will be very important for our team with the experience he has, the necessary class and the character that we need at the moment."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here