Rilski Sportist Samokov

On a Saturday in the 2006–07 season, Rilski Sportist beat Levski Sofia 2:1. Samokov finished 14th and last, and went down. The same thing had happened four seasons earlier, on the same finishing position.

The club that did it had been assembled out of two local sides, Benkovski and Levski, merged on 13 February 1947 into a physical-culture society. It lasted two years: the 1949 sports reform dissolved the team and folded it into the departmental organisation Cherveno Zname. The name came back in 1957, and the football section only became a club in its own right in 1985. Licensing trouble forced a re-registration in 2010, which is why the paperwork now reads Rilski Sportist 2011.

Samokov is a ski town below the Rila mountains.

Second-tier titles in 2001–02 and 2005–06 both bought a single season in the top flight. After the 2010 reset the club won the Sofia regional group twice, in 2010–11 and 2013–14, then took the south-west zone in 2023–24 and returned to the Second League.

In the cup they have twice reached the quarter-finals. In 1950–51 Spartak Sofia put four past them; in 2001–02 Levski won the tie 7:0 on aggregate. Both times the run ended at the same stage.

Home is the Iskar Stadium, 7,000 seats in a town of skiers.