site.btaOver A Decade in Waiting: Ilia Gruev Puts Bulgaria Back on Premier League Map

After a gap of 11 years, a Bulgarian football player will once again play in the Premier League – the strongest league according to UEFA’s ratings. This weekend, Ilia Gruev will wear Leeds United colours in England’s top tier – the first Bulgarian in it since Aleksandar Tonev who played his last match for Aston Villa on April 5, 2014.

Gruev is only the ninth Bulgarian to taste Premier League action in the competition’s history. Except him and Tonev, this has been done by Boncho Genchev, Radostin Kishishev, Valeri Bojinov, Svetoslav Todorov, Stanislav Manolev, Martin Petrov, Aston Villa’s former captain Stiliyan Petrov, as well as two-time champion and 2010/11 season’s top scorer Dimitar Berbatov.

The success is even more significant given the current condition of Bulgarian football. Gruev will most likely be Bulgaria’s only representative in the top 5 leagues (England, Spain, Germany, Italy and France), as only five others are part of those countries’ second tiers. 19-year-old youth international Mert Durmush is owned by Seria A’s newly promoted side Pisa SC, but has yet to play an official match for the first team, having been loaned out to third-tier Sestri Levante last season. This summer, he returned to Pisa and is training with the men's team.

Last season, Gruev played an important role in Leeds' promotion to the Premier League. Despite sustaining a significant injury to his right knee meniscus and having to undergo surgery that kept him off the pitch for three months, he took part in 23 games and was a regular starter in the final run of fixtures.

SofaScore maintains statistics on Championship players who have participated in at least half of the games last season. Gruev ranks high in several categories – out of 371 such players, he has the 7th highest pass accuracy rate (90.7%) and the 22nd best average match rating (7.20).

From an early age, it was clear that football was the only path he wanted to follow. His father, Ilia Gruev Sr., is a former Bulgarian national team player who ended his career in Germany and has been coaching since 2009. Growing up in the German football system proved to be fundamental to the career of the current Leeds United defensive midfielder.

In an interview with Forbes Bulgaria, Gruev Jr. recounts that at the age of 12 he was invited to a training camp at Bayern Munich, and at 15 he chose to continue his development at the academy of four-time German champions Werder Bremen. He gradually broke into the club's senior team, helped it qualify back to the Bundesliga, and his subsequent performance at the highest level of local football secured him a EUR 6.5 million transfer to Leeds in England.

Now he faces his biggest challenge yet. Like any club climbing from the Championship to the Premier League, Leeds has strengthened its squad, and their record transfer this summer came exactly in the Bulgarian's position - the West Yorkshire club paid EUR 20 million for defensive midfielder Anton Stach from Hoffenheim, and Sean Longstaff from Newcastle also joined the team in this area of the field.

The competition is tougher, but Gruev's consistency has long earned him the trust of coach Daniel Farke. The Bulgarian started the preseason with 86 minutes against Manchester United, and SofaScore gave him one of the highest ratings in the match. He s substituted in for Longstaff against Spanish side Villarreal and played one half before providing an assist to Stach seconds after coming on against Italian side Milan.

For the 25-year-old, reaching the Premier League is just a stepping stone. Speaking to Forbes Bulgaria, he is already looking ahead to his next goals – to prove himself in the league, perform at a high level, and be on par with the best in world football: “My successes in recent years have made me hungry for more. I believe that the peak of my career is yet to come, and I feel deep down that the more successful you are, the more you want to achieve.”