117 days on the estimate, and a long, private, unglamorous year of a rehabilitation nobody watches. Saburtalo lose a footballer; he loses considerably more than a season.
Beka Dartsmelia 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.
Squad18 Oct 2027
Jemal Tabidze falls out with a teammate over standards
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.
Successful dribbles: 14. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
The dugout18 Oct 2027
The view from the dugout
“We did not lose. Some weeks that is all you get, and I would rather have the point than not.” Otar Chakvetadze chose the glass-half-full version of 1‑1; the supporters left with the other one.
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Saburtalo this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Somebody said out loud what several people thought about how hard another man trains, and Jemal Tabidze was in the middle of it. The one dressing-room argument that is genuinely about football.
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Saburtalo are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Successful dribbles: 16. Every time he got the ball somebody had to make a decision, and every time the decision was wrong.
The dugout10 May 2027
The manager’s verdict
“That is on me. I pick the team and I picked wrong.” Managers say that when they mean it and when they need to be seen to, and after 0‑1 Otar Chakvetadze left the room before anybody could ask which.
The words a physio says slowly. 124 days is what the club will announce and everybody who has heard this diagnosis before knows the number is the least of it: the knee comes back before the player does.
“I have given this everything, but my family is not here and neither am I, not really.” A footballer can be coached out of bad form. Nobody has ever been coached out of this, and Saburtalo know it.
Every footballer has an answer to the question about his boyhood club, and most of them never get to act on it. Valentino Lainer has, at Saburtalo, and the first month will show what that does to a man.
Jemal Tabidze 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.
Saburtalo asked and Dila said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
A loan enquiry to Dinamo Tbilisi: cover, or a look at somebody the club cannot afford to buy yet. Either way the answer will come back inside the week.
Saburtalo have made the call to Dinamo Batumi. No fee, a share of the wages, and a spare shirt in the position where the squad has been thinnest all season.
It is the least glamorous business a club does and the reason seasons do not collapse in February. Allyson is here for the weeks when three men are injured and somebody still has to play.
In brief
BoardroomOpen for business: Saburtalo enter the window