South Africa on Georgia's mind

Georgia will host South Africa on 27 March as part of their preparations for their EURO 2004™ qualification campaign.

Brazil snubbed
"We had to fill in that date and we had offers from Costa Rica, Mexico, Senegal and even Brazil," said Football Federation of Georgia [FFG] general secretary Valery Cholaria. "But we did not want to play away from home, that's why we decided to invite the South Africans."

Fixtures for 2002
The full fixture list for 2002 has been announced: Georgia will meet Ukraine on 17 April and Estonia on 21 August. There are also plans to play Estonia in February 2003. "We can't play more games because the limit of call-ups for our foreign players has been changed. We can only use them five times now, even though we have to play seven games in 2002," Cholaria added.

Stadium change
The FFG also announced this week that the team will now play at the Lokomotiv stadium in Tblisi because the national stadium  needs some renovations. "It would be more beneficial financially to play at the national stadium, but the national team will play instead at the stadium picked by head coach Aleksandr Chivadze. And I know he wants Georgia to play at Lokomotiv," said FFG president Merab Zhordania.