A small country, a big night
Georgia has had Monday, October 26 circled for weeks. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is among the contenders for the Ballon d’Or, and tonight’s ceremony in London could make him the first Georgian to win it. He will not be in the room. The PSG winger is out for months with a serious knee injury, the torn anterior cruciate ligament PSG confirmed after the Champions League night against Barcelona.
RMC Sport spoke to people who know how the country feels about him. Local journalist Amiran Shaishmelashvili calls him a hero and an idol for the new generation, a player who went from nothing to the very top. Adel Chedli, who was Willy Sagnol’s assistant with the national team until the end of September, says the staff felt the scale of it during their last game together, against Northern Ireland. Kvaratskhelia has now made the shortlist three times in the last four seasons.
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From a village to the Champions League
He is 25 and already regarded as the best Georgian footballer of all time. The numbers back it up: ten goals in last season’s Champions League, the competition’s best player award, two league titles in Italy, two in France and two European Cups. The route was not smooth. His father also played, but as a boy the winger sometimes needed hours to reach the nearest big town from his village. He came through Dinamo Tbilisi and Rustavi, left for Russia, then had to return and join Dinamo Batumi when the war began.
Shaishmelashvili puts the country’s sporting record in context. Fewer than four million people live in Georgia, yet it has produced Champions League winners, NBA champions and Olympic medallists. Nobody, he says, has had the impact Kvaratskhelia has. Billboards of him line the streets of Tbilisi, and Chedli reaches for a nickname: the Georgian Zizou.
The rivals and the World Cup problem
The field is brutal. Lamine Yamal, Kylian Mbappé, Harry Kane and his own team-mate Ousmane Dembélé are all in the conversation. Georgia did not play at the World Cup, which Shaishmelashvili admits could count against him. His hope is a repeat of 1968, when George Best became the only Northern Irishman to win the award without playing in a World Cup.
The federation says the ceremony remains one of the most watched sporting events in the country, whatever the result. The players still have to wait for the envelope.
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