Georgia on our minds

While not quite the frequency of playing Oman, the Republic of Ireland often have Georgia on their mind. Thursday night’s game will be the fourth between the sides in the last four years. The countries have played each other on seven occasions with six competitive wins and one 4-0 friendly victory all going to Ireland.

When the Georgian manager Vladimer Weiss spoke with the Irish media in the Aviva Stadium on the eve of their World Cup 2018 qualifier, he said was looking to put those defeats out of his player’s minds. His inspiration looking back was more from his time managing his native Slovakia when he was undefeated in the two games against Ireland.

“The past seven games that is history,” he said in relation to those Georgian loses to the Boys in Green. Ireland, along with Italy, have inflicted the most amount of defeats against Georgia.

“We are working on rectifying that. We are trying to explain to the players that what has happened in the past, stays in the past and we are looking forward to the future now.”

While their record looks stark, only a goal has separated the sides in five of those competitive wins (along with a 2-0 scoreline back in the 2003 match in Dublin). It was also a one goal defeat for Georgia in their opening qualifying game of this campaign.

Extratime.ie asked the 52-year-old manager did he feel his team were unlucky to lose 2-1 at home to Austria in their game last month.

“Against Austria we didn’t play very well in the first half,” said Weiss about the match in Tbilisi they were losing 2-0 at half time. “We made one or two mistakes. The second half was better. We put a lot of power in attack and scored a wonderful goal from Jano Ananidze.

“When I took this job I watched a lot of games of the Georgian national team. A lot of unlucky losses. That shows potential as we have a lot of talented players. A lot of matches were unlucky results against Ireland so I hope it is time to change the history.”

Weiss, Georgia’s tenth permanent manager since 2000, took up the role last March to lead the team who are ranked 137th in the world just behind joint 135^th placed Sudan and Thailand (Ireland sit in 31^st spot).

He managed Slovakia for four years from 2008, qualifying them for the 2010 World Cup where they made the last 16 by eliminating holders Italy. During this managerial spell with Slovakia, his team played Ireland twice.

“Five years ago it was a young Slovakian team who played in this fantastic stadium before maybe the best fans in the world,” said Weiss recalling the game in September 2011. “0-0 here and at home it was 1-1 draw which wasn’t an easy game.

“We have quality and Ireland have quality. You have the experience of playing at the European Championship in France and you played fantastic. We know about your quality in attack and in defence.”

His team trained out on the Lansdowne Road pitch after the press conference. While it is normal to see a player where a scrub cap on the Aviva pitch, it is usually a rugby player rather than a footballer. However Murtaz Daushvili, who plays with Dioshgiori in Hungary, wears a scrum cap to protect a previous head injury.

Georgia have won just one solitary away qualifier in the last decade and that was a 3-0 win over Gibralter in the Euro 2016 qualifiers. Extratime.ie asked defender Guram Kashia is he confident that his team can put their disappointing away record behind them in Dublin.

“Now we have a different team with a different coach so it will be a different story,” said the Vitesse Arnhem centre half. “It is the beginning of the campaign. We cannot focus on previous games. How bad we played. Now is the next game. We are only focusing on the future.

“We know that you are very good from set pieces. We are aware of this. We must be particularly strong defending set pieces and going into challenges and our physical play against an Irish side who win more physical encounters in the past.

“If we do that, we believe we do have a chance to get a good result because we have technically very gifted players who will be able to create chances for themselves.”

GEORGIA (probable): Giorgi Loria (Krylya Sovetov); Otar Kakabadze (Gimnastic Tarragona), Guram Kashia (Vitesse Arnhem), Solomon Kvirkvelia (Rubin Kazan), Giorgi Navalovski (Veria); Valeri Kazaishvili (Legia Warsaw), Murtaz Daushvili (Dioshgiori); Aleksandre Kobakhidze (Vorskla Poltava), Jano Ananidze (Spartak Moscow), Levan Mchedlidze (Empoli); Vladimer Dvalishvili (Dinamo Tbilisi).