The foundation of the Georgian national team goes back to 1992, where the country obtained its autonomy. Until that time, their players helped the Soviet team – though there are precedents for it after 1992, too. For instance, the 40-year-old Revaz Chomakidze played in the Russian team both at the Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Olympic Games, gaining one silver and one bronze medal. Nearly a decade later, he played for Georgia over the one-year-long march in the EC qualifiers. The local legend - who also has a silver medal from the WC – didn’t only play in the past few years, but was the coach of the youth national teams of the country, too, qualifying for the Stuttgart 2010 Junior European championship as his first success. Montenegrin Jovan Popovic was appointed as head coach in January 2012, assisted by Vladimir Iselidze – by now, they can be called successful coaches. As Hungarian and Georgian governments strengthened economic relations, and, in the recent past, the low-cost Hungarian airline announced its new destination to Georgia the team’s enthusiast fans are expected to arrive for the EC in large numbers. Results, recent past Another main cause of the success was the nationalization of four players: Croatian Marko Elez, Marino Francevic and Marko Jelaca, and also Montenegrin Damir Tsrepulia ‘became Georgian’ not so long ago. There was no surprise that the biggest amount of goals were scored by them four. They finished their march to the EC on 1 March, after one year, and 15 qualifier matches (Albania abandoned to play during the first round), losing only twice. The first time it happened was against Slovakia, who won 17-16 in Georgia, then came the loss to Turkey in the play-offs. (They also tied once, in Slovakia.) The last match, where Turkey defeated them 12-9 was still an aggregate victory for Georgia, as they won the first leg at home 8-4, so they qualified by one goal for the European championship.
Posted on: Thu, 15 May 2014 09:22:12 +0000