Nikola Iliyanov Iliev

Nikola Iliev's route to a first team began early: he joined Botev Plovdiv's academy in 2016, and by September 2020 the club had sold him on to Inter Milan for €500,000. What followed at Inter was almost entirely at youth level. His Primavera side won the Italian championship in 2021/22, and Iliev scored the winning goal in the final against Roma. In a UEFA Youth League tie against Viktoria Plzeň, he scored four times in a single match. None of it translated into a senior appearance for Inter's first team. The loan to CSKA 1948 came in August 2023, when the club took him from Inter with an option to buy. In Sofia he played 21 league matches and scored once for the first team, adding a further appearance and goal for the reserve side. Since then he has settled into Botev's side wearing the number 7 shirt, an attacking midfielder equally at home drifting into the wing or leading the line. He made his Bulgaria debut on 23 September 2022 in a 5-1 win over Gibraltar and has gone on to earn caps at that level, though he has yet to find the net for the national team.