Why Georgia’s Win Over Portugal Matters
The South Caucasus country is playing at the Euros at a critical juncture in its history.
It was difficult, on Wednesday, not to smile for Georgia when the final whistle blew in the national team’s match against Portugal, one of the final games of the group stage at the 2024 UEFA European Championship (aka the Euros).
Of course, part of the elation is a result of the Cinderella aspect of the story. This is the first time ever that Georgia has even qualified for a major international tournament; they are the lowest ranked team in the field. And yet, in the team’s three group stage games, it lost only one. By beating a top-10 Portugal team 2-0, Georgia not only secured a spot in the knockout stage but pulled off the biggest upset in the tournament’s history.
Sure, Portugal was largely playing its B-team, having already secured its own advancement to the next round. But the win still matters for Georgia and its fans, and not only because they were counted out before the tournament even began. It matters because Georgia is playing in the Euros at a critical juncture for its geopolitical status in Europe.
There’s no doubt that Georgians broadly view themselves as European. Since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the South Caucasus country has continuously maintained a pro-Western foreign policy, and Georgians have pushed for more integration with Europe.
But the view of Georgia’s identity and status from the heart of the continent is much more fluid. After all, the Black Sea is quite large (an important reminder), so for Europe’s major powers, the Caucasus are isolated. Tbilisi may as well be an ocean away. Perhaps Georgia could be considered a bridge between Europe, the Middle East and Asia, but not solely in just one of them.
As Joshua Kucera wrote for Slate in 2017:
[T]his strictly European identity has never quite fit Georgia, which is—to its credit—a one-of-a-kind place with its own alphabet, a language with no close relatives, and a unique cuisine far richer than you would expect of a country of fewer than 5 million… And so, behind the official political consensus, a suspicion lingers that the rest of the world may not consider Georgia to be as European as Georgians do.
That suspicion has begun to lift in recent years. Georgia’s European ambitions gained a new sense of urgency in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which established that Georgians and Europeans share a common enemy. A month after that, Georgia officially applied to join the EU, and at the end of last year, Brussels granted it “candidate status.”
EU accession enjoys broad support—more than 80% approval—in Georgia. And yet, although the government ostensibly supports it as well, the ruling party has engaged in democratic backsliding that has undercut—critics might even say outright sabotaged—the country’s EU aspirations. The party’s ties to Moscow have drawn the ire of the population, and led to increased tensions with Brussels.
That’s the geopolitical situation Georgia found itself in entering the Euros—torn between a population pushing closer to Europe and a government pushing away, while across the Black Sea, suspicion about its European status shifts but continues to linger.
And as a team, Georgia was certainly not listed among the Western European favorites, nor the Eastern European dark horses. Its fellow group members saw Georgia as a gimme. Sure, they qualified for the Euros. But did they really, truly belong there?
That question was answered, or at least overshadowed, on Wednesday night at a stadium in Germany. Just two minutes after the starting whistle, rising star Khvicha Kvaratskhelia scored against the powerhouse that is Portugal. Georgian fans erupted into cheers, drowning out the commentators and drowning out any lingering suspicions.
Today, Georgia will play Spain. It will almost certainly lose. But no one is questioning if the country belongs on this stage anymore.