{"id":11919,"date":"2025-10-28T22:39:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-28T22:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eplvip.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/28\/manchester-united-icon-taken-hostage-in-restaurant-to-force-transfer-soccer-sports\/"},"modified":"2025-10-28T22:39:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-28T22:39:17","slug":"manchester-united-icon-taken-hostage-in-restaurant-to-force-transfer-soccer-sports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eplvip.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/28\/manchester-united-icon-taken-hostage-in-restaurant-to-force-transfer-soccer-sports\/","title":{"rendered":"Manchester United icon taken hostage in restaurant to force transfer | Soccer | Sports"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Dimitar Berbatov has revealed a shocking ordeal early in his career in which he was taken hostage in a restaurant by people trying to force him to leave the club. The former Manchester United striker was just a teenager establishing himself at CSKA Sofia when the alarming episode came to light.<\/p>\n<p>After a training session, his teammates drove him under false pretenses to a restaurant, where a group of men detained him for several hours and forced him to transfer to a competing team. Berbatov, who went on to play for Bulgaria, Tottenham and the Red Devils, spoke about the unusual incident on the Rio Ferdinand Presents podcast.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>He said: &#8220;I was playing for CSKA Sofia and I was really starting to show my qualities. And usually when you show your qualities as a player, teams will come to you and make you an offer and ask you how long your contract is, how much the acquisition cost, etc.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Back home it was a lot different. Back home it was like, &#8216;Him? All right, bring him here.&#8217; I didn&#8217;t have a car, so after training my teammates said, &#8216;Come with me, we need to take you to your friends.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And, of course, I was a little naive. And maybe I trusted him because we played on the same team. So I got in his car and he took me to a restaurant. We went into the restaurant and there was obviously a table in the restaurant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;At one table, there was a guy sitting by himself. And at the other three tables, there was a big guy, a refrigerator, typical Balkan guys sitting behind him, just looking scared. The guy who took me there was like, &#8216;Go over there, sit down, I&#8217;ll see you later.&#8217; And the guy was like, &#8216;Come here, sit down.&#8217;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&#8220;I was just sitting there thinking in my head, &#8216;What&#8217;s going on? What&#8217;s going on? I&#8217;ve got to call my dad, I&#8217;ve got to call my dad.&#8217; And the guy starts talking, &#8216;Do you know what they call me?&#8217; Now, in English, it&#8217;s probably like, &#8216;They call me Cook.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m like, &#8216;Okay, so we know you. We need to change the team. We want you on our team. We need to get you.&#8217; And I&#8217;m like, &#8216;Yeah, but I play for CSKA Sofia. I mean, I like it there.'&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He said, &#8216;We&#8217;ll figure it out, don&#8217;t worry.&#8217; And the guys were sitting there, and I was just like this, scared, of course. So I sat there for probably two or three hours, and eventually the guy got me to call my dad.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>&#8220;And I&#8217;m like calling my dad, &#8216;I&#8217;m here. I don&#8217;t know where I am. People around me, great people.&#8217; I was talking so fast that he said, &#8216;Calm down, breathe. Calm down, just breathe.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And I said, &#8216;What the heck? They&#8217;re going to kidnap me here, but I don&#8217;t want to go, I want to go home.&#8217; And he said, &#8216;Okay, okay. Let&#8217;s see what we can do. I&#8217;m going to call that person.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the end, someone called someone and the leaders of both teams figured out a way for me to not move and just stay put. In that situation, as an 18-year-old and knowing how things were going in Bulgaria at the time, I thought to myself, &#8216;This is the limit for me. Maybe they&#8217;ll beat me, or I don&#8217;t know.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But eventually my dad came and put me in the car and I thought, &#8216;Oh my God.&#8217; It made me realize early on in life that I had to grow up and be a man.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.express.co.uk\/sport\/football\/2127047\/Man-Utd-Dimitar-Berbatov\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dimitar Berbatov has revealed a shocking ordeal early in his career in which he was taken hostage in a restaurant by people trying to force him to leave the club. The former Manchester United striker was just a teenager establishing himself at CSKA Sofia when the alarming episode came to light. After a training session,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11919","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-matches"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Manchester United icon taken hostage in restaurant to force transfer | Soccer | Sports - EPL VIP \u2013 Latest English Premier League News &amp; Updates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/eplvip.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/28\/manchester-united-icon-taken-hostage-in-restaurant-to-force-transfer-soccer-sports\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Manchester United icon taken hostage in restaurant to force transfer | Soccer | Sports - EPL VIP \u2013 Latest English Premier League News &amp; Updates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dimitar Berbatov has revealed a shocking ordeal early in his career in which he was taken hostage in a restaurant by people trying to force him to leave the club. 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