The first edition of the Balkan Cup featured Romania, Greece, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. It was played over three years from 1929 to 1931. Romania won the first title after beating Yugoslavia 4–2. In subsequent tournaments, the system saw significant changes, with teams playing each other only once, and the competition was shortened to just a single week. From 1932 to 1936, the competition was played every year with the same four teams until the outbreak of World War II.
After a seven-year hiatus due to World War II, the competition was revived in 1946. Greece dropped out of the tournament the same year and was replaced by Albania, who went on to win the 1946 edition by defeating Romania 1–0 in the final game. In 1947, Hungary entered the tournament and won it in its first attempt. Hungary proved to be a world footballing power at the time with a 9–0 thrashing against Bulgaria. In 1948, the Balkan Cup was expanded to seven teams with Poland and Czechoslovakia joining the tournament. However, the 1948 edition was never completed. Hungary was topping the group at the time of its cancellation. Because of the expansions, the 1947 and 1948 tournaments were officially renamed Balkan and Central European Championship.
The competition was not played again until 1973 when a round robin group system was replaced by a knockout system with semi-finals and finals, played over three years. This time only four countries took part – Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece. Bulgaria won the final on away goals against Romania in 1976. In 1977, the second edition of the revived tournament was launched, this time consisting of five teams with Yugoslavia returning to take part. Romania went on to win the last edition in 1980 by beating Yugoslavia 4–1 at home in the final.
Since the first official tournament in 1929–31, 17 hat-tricks have been scored in over 50 matches of the 12 editions of the tournament. The first hat-trick was scored by Rudolf Wetzer of Romania, playing against Greece on 25 May 1930. The last was by Anghel Iordănescu 50 years later, on 27 August 1980, when he netted a hat-trick for Romania in the second leg of the 1977–80 final in a 4-1 win over Yugoslavia. The record number of hat-tricks in a single Balkan Cup is four, during the inaugural edition. The only player to have scored more than one hat-trick is Ljubomir Angelov, both at the 1935 Balkan Cup, in which he was the top goal scorer with those 6 goals. The record for the most goals scored in a single Balkan Cup game is 5, which has been achieved once by Rudolf Wetzer when he scored 5 for Romania in an 8-1 win over Greece. Romania also holds the record for most hat-tricks scored with 5, being closely followed by Hungary and Yugoslavia with 4 each. Bulgaria and Greece jointly hold the record for most hat-tricks conceded with 6 each.
This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.
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