Rozova dolina

Sevtopolis holds 15,000 people, more than Kazanlak could ever fill for a third-tier fixture, but the club has played there since 1968 and never looked for anywhere else. It was built for a bigger club with bigger crowds in mind, and Rozova Dolina has simply grown into whatever space is left over.

The team started out in 1948 as DNA Kazanlak, taking its current name later from the valley of rose fields that gives the region its living. The one season worth remembering came in 1982/83, in the top flight, when the Roses beat CSKA Sofia 2-0 at home and held Levski Sofia to a draw before finishing 15th and going straight back down. Decades in the lower leagues followed, and by the mid-2010s the club was in real difficulty.

Georgi Mermekliev took over in January 2016 and put money into the infrastructure; within the year the team was back in the Bulgarian Cup for the first time in fifteen years. The clearest return on that investment came in 2020/21, when Rozova Dolina won the Cup of the Bulgarian Amateur Football League, beating Marek Dupnitsa 3-2 in the final — a repeat trip to that final in 1999 had ended in a 4-3 defeat to Vidima-Rakovski.

None of that carries the weight of a league or cup title, and there isn't one in the club's history. What Kazanlak does have is a fixture it calls its own: games against Levski Karlovo are known locally as the Rozova Dolina derby, sharper than the club's other regular meetings with Tundzha Yambol or Spartak Plovdiv. These days the Roses sit in the Third League, Southeast group, facing Neftohimik Burgas among others.

Ivo Ivanov has worn the captain's armband through these recent years, the name supporters mention first when the club's more distant history — Todor Yanchev, Hristo Yanev — comes up.