‘That’s how I thought the game should be played, with great assists and goals. If you have improvisation without the end result, you need to go to the circus’ Dimitar Berbatov reflects on his playing style

Dimitar Beratov cut a distinct figure on the football pitch during his 20-year career.

The Bulgarian’s elegant, composed and laid-back style made him one of the classiest players of his era, with FourFourTwo placing him at number 64 in a list of the 100 greatest Premier League players of all-time.

Like the very best iconic players, the former Tottenham, Manchester United and Fulham striker had a special move, with his Berbatov Spin - as seen in his assist against West Ham in 2008 - even moving band Broke Boy Fly to write a song about it.

Berbatov opens up on the Berbatov spin

“[Laughs] I didn’t know about this!,” Berbatov tells FourFourTwo when asked if he has heard the 2024 song. “That’s actually what I was just talking about, because the Berba Spin was an assist – it was so good and the moment was so right, everything happened so perfectly, that I can agree that a song is a good thing to have to describe it!

Those types of movement and improvisations gave me so much joy. When I did the Berba Spin, I could hear people go, ‘Whoaaa’. That made my day even more – when I passed to Cristiano Ronaldo to score, it was complete.”

Given Berbatov’s ability as a deep-lying playmaker, does he believe that goal sums him up the most, even though he did not score it himself?

"I had so many good assists that aren’t mentioned regularly – that one pops up all of the time – and I scored beautiful goals as well,” he continues. “But that was me: that was how I saw football and how I thought it should be played.

“Improvisation – with an end result, of course, because if you have improvisation without the end result, you need to go to the circus. In my case, I wanted to have improvisation with great assists and goals. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, but that’s how football is.

“You need to enjoy it and entertain the supporters, but with an end result too. That was me, and for me it worked.”

Berbatov reacted to that goal almost with nonchalance, as if he was unbothered by the assist. Was that on purpose? “[*Laughs*] I do go back and watch it from time to time, because we miss the old days – we miss when we used to play football, and you want to see what you did back in the day. If you watch it, after that goal, you’re right: I was walking and just pretending, ‘Nothing happened, guys, I do this all the time – what’s all the fuss?!’

“But inside of me, I knew I’d done something special, because of the noise of the crowd. I knew straight away that they loved it.”

Dimitar was speaking to FFT on behalf of LiveScore and LiveScore Bet. LiveScore’s mission is to fuel fans’ passion for sport – download the app for real-time updates and head to livescore.com for more info*