Private jets and press conferences: Why Hristo Stoichkov at Parma was doomed to fail in the 1990s

Parma purchased a 29-year-old Hristo Stoichkov from Barcelona for £6.5 million ahead of the 1995/96 campaign, but the move massively backfired.

A Ballon d'Or winner just a year before, Stoichkov had received a multitude of individual and club honours during his five seasons at Barcelona at the beginning of the 1990s, and his move to Parma seemed an incredible coup for the Italian outfit.

However, the Bulgarian lasted just a season. As former team-mate Lorenzo Minotti explains, tactical tweaks were made by manager Nevio Scala to accommodate Stoichkov which ultimately proved to the detriment of the rest of the team.

“He was a Ballon d’Or winner and is still a friend of mine, but he lived football in a completely different way,” Lorenzo Minotti tells FourFourTwo.

“He arrived on a personal jet, lent by the Bulgarian government, and would only talk at press conferences. We’d never held a press conference before – we would meet the local journalists at the park.

"Stoichkov was used to a different reality and it brought imbalance to the group. It was hard to slot him into our formation, with Zola and Asprilla. Scala needed to change his setup and the team suffered.”

After just five goals in 23 Serie A appearances for Parma and unable to settle in Emilia-Romagna, Stoichkov returned to Catalonia and Barcelona to rediscover his form and love of football.

However, he never quite managed to hit the heights he did in his first spell at the club, and soon left for CSKA Sofia in his home country. From there he became a footballing nomad, pitching up at Al-Nassr in Saudi Arabia, Kashiwa Reysol in Japan and MLS sides Chicago Fire and DC United, before eventually retiring in 2003 aged 37.

Parma, meanwhile, went onto win the UEFA Cup and Coppa Italia a couple of years after his departure, in the 1998/99 campaign.