Georgia 2
Portugal 0
A NIGHT TO re-define Georgia’s Dream.
Football’s great democratic sweep of astonishing joy has now come to engulf Georgia, who have beguiled their European championship debut by qualifying for the knockout stages with a magnificent and deserved win over Portugal.
Some of the Georgian players and many of their fans have spent the last few months protesting the law passed by the ruling party, Georgia Dream, which turns away from Europe and toward Russia.
But football remains a road to Europe, and Georgia are determined to travel further down it still. They took a 90-second lead to the remarkable Kvicha Kvaratskhelia, did the necessary surviving, and then sealed the joy with a penalty just before the hour mark.
They will face Spain in the last-16, while Portugal will play Slovenia at the end of a night on which they had nothing riding.
With Portugal already secure as group winners regardless of the night’s result, Roberto Martinez used the safety-net to parachute in an almost entirely new team. There were only three surviving starters from the win over Turkiye: goalkeeper Diogo Costa, Joao Palhinha and, well, you might guess who.
Cristiano Ronaldo tonight also became the only Portugal player to start all of their three group games. Just because Portugal had nothing left to achieve didn’t mean Ronaldo had run out of lines to add to his Wikipedia page.
Tonight’s bounty: The Oldest-Ever Scorer at a Euros; The First Player to Score at Six Different Euros.
Georgia, meanwhile, were playing for history rather than records. The byzantine permutations of the new format simplified themselves before kick-off. Georgia would qualify with a win and would go home if they drew or lost.
A banner hung among the Georgian fans read, ‘Believe’, while one fan’s t-shirt bore the slogan, “Georgia: A small country with a big heart.”
If Georgia had nothing to lose from the off, they bewilderingly had it all to lose within two minutes.
Nintey seconds after kick-off, Portugal defender Antonio Silva played a backpass so bad it met the threshold for a diplomatic gift. It went directly to striker Georges Mikautadze, who promptly burst forward and slid the ball left for Kvaratskhelia, who took a touch, looked up, and arced the ball into the bottom corner of the net.
As all related to Georgia lost themselves in a heady, raucous state of bliss, Willy Sagnol stood still and exhaled, knowing that the battle was only now commencing.
Roberto Martinez started with the back three he used in the opening game before binning against Turkyie and the game-plan was pretty obvious: create overloads on the flanks and get the ball into the box for Cristiano.
Georgia, however, defended superbly, plugging every gap at which Portugal prodded and poked. Whenever Portugal did force their way through the sliver of a gap, Georgia repelled them through a furious kind of desperation: Giorgi Gvelesiani materialised from nowhere to block Ronaldo’s left-foot volley after a neat link-up with Joao Pahlinha.
And if this high-stakes drama was not sufficiently grand, it was elevated to a new level by one of the great nights of Ronaldo Operatics. Here he swore and thrust out his arms and yelled at the sky like King Lear on the heath.
Antonio Silva made his second major mistake of the night when he attacked the same back-post in-swinger as Ronaldo, and got in his way. Ronaldo’s jutted out his arms in extravagant reproach and Antonio Silva will surely never make the same mistake again.
Ronaldo had his shirt-pulled from a subsequent corner and, once the ball was out of reach, flopped to the ground. The referee was unmoved, at which point he erupted and earned himself a yellow card for an exquisite kind of dissent.
Georgia continued to sag deeper and deeper and the half-time break brought respite but no immediate change in approach. Immediately after half-time the whole thing began to feel untenable. Georgia felt they were teetering; wobbling off the side of the tightrope and staving off the fall by the frantic windmilling of their arms. The prone Lasha Dvali contorted his body to spin a Ronaldo shot from close range over the bar; the subsequent corner was diverted just wide of the near post; Kochorashvili leaned in to take the ball from Felix with a part of his shoulder that was on the very edge of legality.
But in the electric, virtuoso Kvaratskhelia they had a constant means of hurting Portugal. He should have added a second shortly after Georgia’s most intense bout of suffering, miscuing his shot from the penalty spot after Kakabadze’s pull-back.
No matter. Soon Georgia were pulling off heroics they didn’t even need. With their left-back Luka Lochoshvili lying prone in the Portugal penalty area and the referee not interested, Portugal swept up the field, and, remaining impervious to the ambient boos, worked the ball to Diogo Dalot 25 yards out from goal. He unleashed a characteristic, whipped shot that Mamardashvili somehow pushed away at full stretch.
But before allowing Portugal take the corner, the referee heard something in his ear. Soon he was standing at the pitch-side monitor watching new Georgian icon Antonio Silva swiping Lochoshvili’s legs from under him.
Penalty given, and Mikautadze rolled the ball to Costa’s left; his placement inch-perfect. This was the trigger: the Georgian bench ran onto the field to fold into each other’s bliss; teary-eyed Georgian journalists stumbled down the press box steps; coaching staff wrapped themselves around a motionless Sagnol.
Not even Ronaldo could compete with the drama, and exited stage left for Goncalo Ramos on the 65-minute mark. His lack of visible complaint told you that a half-hour off was the best concession Martinez could extract from him.
Georgia continued to gobble up Portuguese attacks and then spring on the counter, with Kvaratskhelia continuing to lead would-be tacklers a merry, snake-hipped dance. He was replaced with 10 minutes to go, turning to his team-mates and subtly pumping his fists. It was the least eye-catching part of one of the great individual performances of these Euros so far.
But Georgia are not a one-man team: they are built on the platform of their solid defence and superb, unflappable goalkeeper, but have pace and daring at wing-back, comfortable passers in midfield and, in Mikautadze, the top scorer across the group stages.
The second goal broke the Portuguese siege, and if there was to be another goal, it looked most likely to be Georgia’s. Substitute Zuriko Davitashvili ran onto Mikautadze’s pass but thumped the ball into the side-netting.
Four minutes of stoppage time, did ,however, threaten to become unbearable, at which point Mamardashvili stood tall. First he reacted sharply to block Nelson Semedo from point-blank range and then he pushed a long-range shot over for a corner which was the final act before the full-time whistle.
Roars rolled and tears streamed and the steps of the stand rumbled and shook as the unmatched majesty of international football caught up another daring set of dreamers.
