TBILISI // The Uefa Super Cup at heart is a noble impulse: to reward winning. To offer the winners of European cup tournaments an extra something at the start of the next season as a way of, well, starting the next season.
In this, the Super Cup is something like a victory lap. And, unleashed from the shackles of Monaco, where it was a fixture from 1998 until 2012, it is now a celebration of triumph on tour, the kind of party that through football economics most European cities will never otherwise witness.
Before Tuesday night, Georgia’s capital had not celebrated a European trophy since Dinamo Tbilisi lifted the 1981 Cup Winners Cup. Barcelona’s 2015 Super Cup title may not be theirs, in that same sense, but the Tuesday’s revelry, pageantry and football mastery was.
“Tbilisi is a great football city, with special fans,” Georgian great and former Manchester City favourite Georgi Kinkladze was quoted saying in the Super Cup programme. “These days they rarely experience the emotions fans in England, the Netherlands and Germany feel every week — but it was different in the past and football will always be the No 1 sport in our country.”
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This is the beauty of the new Super Cup, removed from Monaco and, before there, from the grounds of Europe’s giants. Be it Tbilisi or Trondheim, next year’s host, or Skopje (2017), cities that have never hosted a major final, whose fans are no less in love with the sport than the citizens of Madrid or London, for one night are treated to the Barcelonas and the Messis of the world. The Super Cup, in this re-purposing, serves as a bright light shining on Europe’s footballing shadows.
And what a light on Tuesday it was for Tbilisi.
On a warm and clear night in the Georgian capital, Lionel Messi was spectacular.
His first goal, a lofted, looping, almost slow-motion free-kick into the top right corner of the net, sent the Georgian crowd into raptures and would have been enough to make it a memorable night.
That he produced another marvel minutes later, a knifing, 20-metre missile of a free-kick past a helpless Sevilla keeper, made it unforgettable.
That there were nine goals total and an extra-time winner, courtesy the scavenging Pedro following another Messi free-kick, confirmed the night’s extraordinary feeling.
Would this have felt the same at the Camp Nou or Stade Louis II? Maybe. The particulars of the match were so extraordinary that they could spark a frenzy in probably any stadium. But in Tbilisi in took on the heightened emotional importance of once-in-a-lifetime experience.
To see Messi flitting about like the dragonflies and moths in the summer air above the Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena was for Tbilisi to celebrate a night of football perhaps unprecedented in this place.
It was a memorable night of football for the men wrapped in Georgian flags and the fans in personalised Barcelona shirts.
“Tkhvashlidze” and “Galashvili” never played for Barca yet, nevertheless, those were two of the names affixed to Barca colours. Whatever connection drew those Georgians to the club, to put their name on the back of Barca’s shirt in tribute, it was certainly more real than ever on Tuesday, with Spain’s champions in their backyard.
When the Super Cup rolls into Trondheim next year, and Skopje the year after, it may not be the same teams and names — maybe it will be Cristiano Ronaldo or Bayern Munich, instead — but it will almost certainly have the same effect.
To that end, the Super Cup has been successfully fashioned into quite a lot more than a sleepy, vaguely confusing season-starting afterthought.
Just ask the fans of Tbilisi.
Uefa Super Cup sponsors Nissan accommodated The National’s coverage of the 2015 Super Cup in Tbilisi
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