Guram Kashia never lost hope. He had come close to qualifying for a major tournament but never quite got there. The most painful miss came in 2020 when Georgia lost in the playoffs to North Macedonia.
The Georgia captain is 36 now so when it was time for the Euro 2024 playoffs he knew this was likely to be his last shot. So he made some tough decisions – and one of them was to stop eating sweets for four months.
“Look, I don’t eat a lot of desserts anyway but I was talking to my Georgia teammate Budu Zivzivadze and I know he likes his sweets,” Kashia says as we meet at the Slovan Bratislava stadium, the home of the Slovakian champions, where he has been playing since 2021. “At training camps we always eat together but this time he didn’t have any dessert, not even some yoghurt. He told me he hadn’t had sweets for four months.”
So Kashia stopped eating sweets, too, to prepare for the games against Luxembourg and Greece. “Four months before those games I didn’t eat anything naughty because I knew how much I’d disappoint myself if we didn’t qualify.” He sharpened everything, including his sleep routine. The failure against North Macedonia drove him on.
“I remember the disappointment we experienced,” he says. “It completely broke us down, as players and as a country. People lost all the joy with football and sports. We had such a big chance, we were playing at home against North Macedonia and should have won. It was difficult in that time and I think we didn’t prepare well as it was Covid time.”
In the intervening four years a lot has changed. Younger and more motivated players have made the national team, including Napoli’s Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. But that is not to say that qualifying for Germany was straightforward. Luxembourg were beaten 2-0 in the semi-final but it took penalties to defeat Greece in the final. “I remember when we scored the last penalty I almost passed out,” he says, laughing.
“From confusion and happiness. Then I was in the dressing room, we were screaming. My phone didn’t stop, everybody was texting me. Chaos. I left the phone in the dressing room and we went outside in Tbilisi, partying, drinking, dancing and singing. Everyone was happy. I don’t even have any videos. Next day, I had hangover, opened my phone and it was empty; no memories.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Georgia take on Turkey in Dortmund. It will be Kashia’s 114th cap – the most of anyone in Georgia – and it is reward for years of hard work and belief. “We deserve to be there and I’m so happy it happened,” he says. Georgia also face Portugal and Czech Republic in Group F. “I feel we are a decent team and we can surprise. We will get punched but we will throw a punch or two for sure. If it lands on someone’s face, then it’s OK.”
Kashia says Georgia’s qualification is a result of the quality in the squad and the gameplan developed by the coach, Willy Sagnol, the former France international. There is star dust sprinkled throughout, with Valencia’s goalkeeper Giorgi Mamardashvili and the Metz striker Georges Mikautadze two of the better-known names, but Kvaratskhelia is undoubtedly the biggest star. “He is really nice and just a normal guy,” says Kashia. “Since he became a big player at Napoli, if you go out from the hotel to the training pitch, it’s always full around the team bus. All the kids want to have a picture with him. We have never had that before and I’ve been here for 15 years.”
Kvaratskhelia is 23 but already a leader. “Sometimes he speaks in the dressing room and on the pitch he is an amazing player,” says Kashia. “When I play against him in the training I sometimes waste my time trying to catch him. It never works. He is very quick and often just roasts me. He has a good mentality and his generation has a lot more belief than we did. We didn’t have so many characters in the dressing room.”
Kashia says he remembers Sagnol from the former defender’s playing days with France and talks to the coach about that – and other things. When Georgia were preparing to play Greece Sagnol was an oasis of calm in the middle of the storm.
“As we went out to play that game we knew that we had the whole country on our shoulders,” says Kashia. “If we had lost, what were they gonna say? The people would criticise you. With him, though, that feeling completely went. He approached the game like no one else had. He managed to remove the pressure and make us feel free.”
Kashia has been with Slovan for three years, having played for Dinamo Tbilisi, Vitesse, San José Earthquakes and Lokomotiv Tbilisi. Growing up, he fell in love with English football, supporting Manchester United and having Roy Keane as his idol.
“I cried at home when England lost against Argentina [in 1998],” he says. His father encouraged him to play rugby but Kashia was saved by his older brother, who had started playing football. Kashia liked what he saw and joined him. “Without my brother I would have been a rugby player with broken nose and ears,” he says.
They spent a lot of time playing football in the streets of Tbilisi. “Those were the days,” he says. “Around year 2000 we didn’t have electricity all the time in Georgia. It would be like 12 in the afternoon and they cut it until 6pm. What would you do for six hours? We were outside playing football in the streets and trying to win prizes like yoghurt, Fanta, Coca-Cola or a Snickers bar. My knees were bleeding all over the place as we were playing on and falling on tarmac.”
Kashia came through the Dinamo Tbilisi youth setup into the first team, where he was appointed captain at 22 before moving abroad. A true leader, he has been a captain in every side he has played for. Off the pitch he enjoys drinking coffee, talking about football – and listening to podcasts.
He has quit social media and gets most of his news from podcasts – and one in particular. “I like to talk about football or people talking about football so when I wake up I start with Guardian Football Weekly,” he says. Music-wise he is into Mac Miller and Kanye West. He also has a tattoo of John Lennon on one of his arms. “It’s very special,” he says. “My daughter makes fun of it because she thinks it is Harry Potter. My teammates think that as well. Most of them are young and they don’t know who John Lennon is so they also thought I was a Harry Potter fan, which I am not.”
The tattoo of the Beatle reminds him of his father, who has died. He was a big Lennon fan. “When we didn’t have electricity at home, he told me to listen to some songs, as we had a stereo with a cassette and batteries. I hated it. Then he started talking to me about Paul McCartney, the Beatles … I really got to love it. I know that if I put it on in the dressing room I’ll get pants and socks thrown at me.” After explaining where his love for the Beatles came from in a Uefa YouTube video, though, his teammates stopped making fun of the tattoo.
Now Kashia plans to get two new tattoos – one inspired by Bratislava and a second of the Euro 2024 logo. He is keen to stress that the Georgia team are very patriotic. “Georgians love our country more than our families. We want to show off our country, talk about it. We are passionate about it. That’s also myself: when I represent my country, it’s the proudest moment for me and my family. I know I have to fight for my country and then it’s easy to motivate yourself.”
