Umaglesi Liga Match

Boris Paichadze Stadium

Police watching over the crowd

Today I went to match a football match of Georgian league. The match was between Dinamo Tbilisi and Torpedo Kutaisi. The entrance was free and about 500 supporters of Dinamo had already arrived and decorated their area with flags. Few hundred supporters of Torpedo arrived to the stadium after few minutes of the starting whistle. There was a line of police men rounding the whole stadium and extra attention was given naturally to the areas of the fanatic supporters. During the match both of the supporters were throwing loud bombs towards to the pitch and also torches were light.

The match itself was entertaining. The final result was 3-2 for Dinamo Tbilisi. When ever Dinamo scored many people in the crowd shouted insults towards supporters of Torpedo and showed middle fingers. There was an interesting incident on the pitch when few players of Torpedo wanted a penalty from a dubious hand ball. The play was not stopped but two players of Torpedo ran to the referee and grabbed him from hands and shoulders. Clearly braking the rule of referees untouchability. Referee wrestled himself out and just let the game run. He did not even give warning to the players for protesting. I think that in many other leagues referee could have given a red card for the players for grabbing referees arm and protesting such way.

After match I did not see any aggressive behavior.  The attendance of the match was several thousand which is quite little for s stadium which has capacity of  54 549 people. I have been told that rugby has become more popular than football in Georgia. Hopefully I will have a chance to see a rugby match here. You can read previous football match reports from Turkey and Spain.