If the announcement that the 2015 UEFA Super Cup is to be held in Tbilisi’s Mikheil Meskhi stadium (above) raised a few eyebrows across Europe, in Georgia itself it left people well and truly stunned. Had a Georgian club managed to reach the group stages of a UEFA competition this year, the stadium, still popularly known as ‘Lokomotivi’, would not have met the criteria necessary for staging a game at that level, let alone a global showpiece event.Currently, only the ‘Dinamo Arena’ – the country’s largest sports venue – has a UEFA category 4 status to its name. Some were left wondering whether Monsieur Platini was naive enough to be seduced by a three minute presentation clip concocted by computer wizards at the Georgian Football Federation (GFF), which had a fantasy dimension beyond that of a Star Trek episode. In truth, it was a gesture of faith, optimism and good will, on a par with Ukraine having been chosen as co-hosts for Euro 2012. One is left to hope for a similarly happy ending to this episode. There is still time.
