“Some decisions take a long time. This one took ten minutes, and most of that was finding a pen.” Tsotne Chikovani and Samtredia agree another 3 years.
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
“We were not good enough today and I am not going to dress it up.” Irakli Lobjanidze after 0‑2, in the tone of a man who knows the next question and does not intend to answer it.
A shoot-out is remembered by its ending, and this one ends with Vladislavs Lazarevs: 2 kept out, and a set of supporters who will describe every one of them for the next twenty years.
Fee agreed, wages agreed, and Dila waiting with a shirt. Nobody at Samtredia is pretending otherwise, and the supporters have stopped asking whether and started asking when.
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Samtredia can pretend not to have heard.
Everything agreed with Lokomotivi, everything agreed with the player; a doctor is the only person left to persuade. The photograph is a day or two away.
Marked 9.76 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
The name of Ruben Gauto has come up in conversations Samtredia were not part of. Nothing formal, nothing signed — but nothing about it accidental either.
Marked 8.26 — the sort of number a correspondent writes down twice to be sure. Everything he tried came off, and what he did not try was not worth trying.
The clubs have agreed terms, and what remains is formality: a medical, a photograph, a signature. Nobody at Samtredia is pretending he will be back in the shirt.
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Avtandil Labadze, and the manager let it.
Squad17 May 2027
Words at Samtredia training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Giorgi Kveladze is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Irakli Lobjanidze on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.
Nobody at Samtredia will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
He used to wear the other shirt. On Saturday he plays against Merani in this one, and whatever he says this week about it being just another game will be untrue.
68 days on the announcement, and a year of quiet, unwatched rehabilitation behind it. Samtredia lose a player for a season; he loses something harder to name.
“Things were said to me before I signed. I am not going to repeat them, but I remember all of them.” Samtredia have not answered, which is an answer of sorts.
Eric Barrios was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
The academy exists for exactly this morning. Aleksandre Gvelesiani has come through every age group the club runs and has now been handed a senior number, and the people who coached him at twelve will be the proudest in the building.
Nobody at Samtredia will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
The language has come, the shrug has gone, and he argues in training like a man who expects to be here next year. None of it shows up on a fee and all of it shows up on the pitch.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Samtredia this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
“I watch every Samtredia game from here. That says everything about where my head is.” The loan at Sapovnela runs its course, but his heart never made the trip.
“The players deserve the credit. My job was easy today.” It was not, and everybody in the room knew it; after 3‑1, Irakli Lobjanidze could afford to be generous.
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Successful dribbles: 26. He went past people as if he had been told there was a prize for it, and by the end the full-back had stopped pretending to try.
7.78, 1 on the scoresheet, and the specific comedy of a back-four player celebrating like somebody who does this every week. He does not, and that is exactly why the ground reacted the way it did.
“The easiest signature of my career.” Giorgi Mchedlishvili and Samtredia agree another 2 years, and the manager can plan around him rather than about him.
Eric Barrios and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
“We keep meeting, and we keep leaving the room with the same numbers we walked in with.” Another round of talks at Samtredia, another week without a signature from Giorgi Mchedlishvili.
10 new signings in one window. Every one may be an upgrade and the side can still be worse for a while, which is the part of a rebuild the verdicts never mention.
“We earned that. I asked them for a reaction and I got one, and now I want the same again on Saturday.” Irakli Lobjanidze on a 1‑0 afternoon that pleased him more than he was prepared to show.