Tbilisi Ready for Super Cup Feast of Spanish Football
Many queued overnight in a park for a ticket, some queued for two nights, and now the biggest club football event to take place in Georgia in decades is upon us – Barcelona v Sevilla in the UEFA Super Cup at Dinamo Arena on August 11.
Having undergone a glitzy $8 million makeover, the stadium has a fresh appearance with the tired looking multi-colored seating replaced by a collage of blue and white and the streets leading to it are already bedecked with official banners. Around the city the excitement is palpable.
For many of Barcelona’s Spanish contingent this will not be a maiden voyage to the Georgian capital as the likes of Gerard Pique and Andres Iniesta featured in Spain’s late 1-0 victory here nearly three years ago.
However, their terrifying South American strike force of Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez will be playing in Tbilisi for the first and probably only time in their careers. For this reason alone it becomes clearer as to why the demand for tickets reached euphoric proportions.
For parents and grandparents, this match will carry some serious “I was there” clout at the dinner table in supras (feasts) of the future.
After all the aforementioned forward trio is perhaps the best attacking ensemble to have ever been assembled in the history of the game. Neymar and Suarez were both on target in the Champions League final in Berlin in June, the club’s fourth triumph in Europe’s elite competition in the space of nine years and their fifth overall.
Messi, who this week allayed any fears that he may not play in the Super Cup by revealing the game was his sole focus for now, is a player many argue to be the greatest of all time. In the Dinamo press center there is a vast collection of framed photos of famous players to have either played in Georgia or against Georgians. Brazilian legend Pele stands out among them and after August 11 he’ll have some modern Argentinian company on that wall.
But there is more to Luis Enrique’s Spanish champions than their embarrassment of goal scoring riches. Midfielders Iniesta, Sergio Busquets and the Croatian Ivan Rakitic, formerly of Super Cup opponents Sevilla, complete a fearsome trio in the center of the park. In defense too there is no shortage of world class talent with marauding Brazilian right-back Dani Alves alongside Pique and Argentine warhorse Javier Mascherano.
In goal, previously perceived as the team’s one weak spot, the occasionally criticized Victor Valdes has been upgraded with German stopper Marc-Andre ter Stegen.
Engraved on the Super Cup trophy you’ll see the names of European football’s most celebrated teams – the AC Milan side of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and the likes of Nottingham Forest, Aston Villa and Aberdeen are also permanently etched here in football history.
Barcelona are hunting a record-equaling fifth Super Cup crown and they are clear favorites to achieve that honor with the local Georgian fans almost universally behind the Catalan club.
Indeed, such has been the clamor for Barcelona, you could be forgiven for thinking there was only one team coming to Tbilisi. But they will have an opponent, and a mighty attractive one at that. Sevilla have enjoyed similar levels of dominance in Europe’s second competition, the Europa League, with their thrilling 3-2 win over Jaba Kankava’s Dnipro in May clinching a fourth triumph in nine years in the competition.
And while the odds are stacked against the Andalusians, history is on their side as the only previous Super Cup meeting between the sides saw Sevilla emerge with a memorable 3-0 success in Monaco in 2006 courtesy of goals from Renato, Freddie Kanoute and Enzo Maresca.
Dani Alves, on the victorious Sevilla side that night, is one of three players in the current Barca side to have featured nine years ago, Messi and Iniesta the others.
Sevilla’s inability to make the step up to Champions League challengers is largely down to economics as the club has been unable to keep hold of some truly world class talent. Alves and Rakitic are cases in point here, and the summer acquisition of Alexix Vidal increasing the population of Sevilla recruits at the Nou Camp.
Similarly, Colombian striker Carlos Bacca, goal hero in May’s Europa League final, joined AC Milan this summer as the Andalusians’ exit door revolved once again.
His replacement, Ciro Immobile, the Italian striker, arrives eager to rebuild a reputation that somewhat stalled in his debut season at Borussia Dortmund with whom he is still attached as he is at Sevilla only on loan.
Their most striking capture of the summer though is Ukrainian playmaker Yevhen Konoplyanka, signed from Dnipro despite some serious interest from England’s Premier League.
A strong contender for the best current player from the post-Soviet space, Konoplyanka’s presence will ensure that the crafty and silky soccer won’t be the sole preserve of Barcelona.
Another to look out for from Eastern Europe is Poland’s Grzegorz Krychowiak who Georgian fans may remember scoring in a 4-0 rout last November. That remains the defensive midfielder’s only international goal so he will be hoping for a similarly memorable visit this time.
If you’re looking for even more tenuous connections to Georgia, Sevilla head coach Unai Emery once coached Georgian football’s Peter Pan, Jano Ananidze, during a dismal spell at Spartak Moscow. His stock has since recovered from that forgettable Moscow malaise, which is more than can be said of the no longer young Jano.
Four Georgians graced Sevilla’s Ramon Sanchez Pizjuan Stadium in 1982, playing for the USSR in a 2-1 defeat to the revered Brazil side of the time.
A match of similar standard would satisfy an expectant Tbilisi crowd who want a match to remember for a lifetime, a match that lives up to the hype and a match that justified that overnight camping for a ticket. For that to happen, Sevilla will need to play their part and there is little doubt that they are equipped to at the very least do that.
Alastair Watt