Ask any Manchester United fan of a certain age what 26 May 1999 means to them, and they will tell you the date has marked them for life. It was the night injury-time goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjær sealed United’s 2-1 comeback in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich at the Camp Nou. It was also the night the life of one United fan in Bulgaria, who has died this week at the age of 62, changed for ever.
That supporter was born Marin Zdravkov Levidzhov in Svishtov, a town on the Danube with a population of 22,000. Growing up in communist Bulgaria adoring football, he dreamed of changing his name to … Manchester United. To claim the name of a football club from the capitalist west, however, was mission impossible. Had Marin tried to do so before the fall of the regime, he would almost certainly have ended up in jail.
Ten years after the end of communism in Bulgaria – on that night in May 1999 – Marin’s idiosyncratic dream edged closer to reality. Watching the final from his modest home in Svishtov and with United trailing, Marin made a promise to himself: if United somehow turned the game around, he would do anything to change his name to that of the club he loved. Then the impossible happened.
The next day, Marin visited a lawyer expressing his unusual request and so began a long, hard battle. Marin’s father, from whom he had inherited his love of United, was long gone and the 36-year-old was living with his mother, working all kinds of odd jobs, including as a construction worker on £15 a day. He was hardly making ends meet, yet his dream became an obsession. He quickly turned into the talk of the town, then became an international sensation, but 15 years full of legal battles and disheartening court decisions lay ahead.
Marin’s wish was rejected initially for copyright reasons: he could not change his name to a trademark known around the globe. Then a local judge ruled partially in his favour, saying Marin could change his first name to Manchester but that he was not to use United as his official surname. “But I don’t want to be named after a city in England, I want to wear the name of my favourite football club,” Marin told the court. The struggle continued.
When not in court, he was often looking after his cats. He had plenty of them in his back yard in Svishtov and loved them as much as the Red Devils. He named them all after United players: from Rio to Rooney, they were the most famous cats in town. Which was the favourite cat of Man U (as his close friends called him)? A kitty called Beckham.
Marin managed another breakthrough in court: he was allowed to add United as an official nickname to his ID card. But still he wasn’t happy. “I won’t stop until my full name is Manchester United,” he vowed. His story soon led to commercial propositions – an offer to have fan merchandise produced under his new name – but despite his financial struggles, he rejected the opportunity because he did not want to profit from his favourite club. The Manchester United name was sacred to him.
A documentary followed in 2011. The crew turned Marin’s dream of visiting Old Trafford into reality and there he even met Dimitar Berbatov, the Bulgaria striker playing for United at the time.
Marin tattooed the United crest on his forehead three years later as a protest against the court decisions and in his last few years it became more and more difficult for him to continue his legal battle. Job opportunities were scarce and he lost his mother to Covid-19. But somehow, he found a way. Born as a Catholic, he got baptised in an orthodox church under the name Manchester United Zdravkov Levidzhov. “At least God will know me with my real name,” he used to say.
This Monday, 13 October, his heart stopped beating. Perhaps now Manchester United’s restless soul could finally find peace.
