Willy Sagnol went down in history this Tuesday evening. He is the first national coach to qualify for participation in the final round of the European Football Championship with Georgia. He is also the first French coach to take part in a European Championship with a foreign nation – and in Germany, of all places, where he had the best time as an active player at FC Bayern between 2000 and 2008.
In the playoffs, the Georgians beat Greece on penalties. “All our efforts, all the hard work we have done over the past three years, we got back today and that is an incredible feeling,” said Sagnol after the game against Greece in the Tbilisi Cauldron.
The Georgians were cheered on frenetically in the Boris Paichadze stadium and then celebrated late at night by 50,000 fans in the specially set up fan zone in the Georgian capital. The next day, Prime Minister Iraqi Kobachidze recommended the team for an award of honor. “These guys are heroes,” he said.
Sagnol, the 2006 World Cup runner-up, has been Georgia’s national coach for almost three years. A surprising choice, but after his failed adventures with Girondins Bordeaux, with the France U-21 national team and for a single Bundesliga game with FC Bayern (2-2 at Hertha), when he split from Carlo Ancelotti in September When he stepped in in 2017, he wanted to take a break.
The Georgian association president Levan Kobiashvili, a 16-year Bundesliga professional in Freiburg, with Schalke 04 and Hertha BSC, contacted Sagnol. “But it took a while before I agreed to the Georgian association because the first discussions took place at the start of the Covid outbreak and I wanted to dedicate myself to my family,” says the Frenchman. “A few months later, several former Bundesliga players contacted me. Called players from the Georgian association and somehow it worked.
To this day I have not regretted this experience for a second.
Published/Updated: Recommendations: 5 Alexander Davydov Published/Updated: Recommendations: 8 Stephan Löwenstein, Vienna Published/Updated: Recommendations: 8
Sagnol spends most of his time in Tbilisi and fully identifies with his task. As a coach, he is considered calm, determined and ambitious. After the European Championships, however, it looks like he will dedicate himself to a new challenge. He receives offers regularly, and after the historic qualification for the European Championships, the interested clubs and nations will probably not decrease.
The road to the 2024 Euro finals was not easy, but Georgia’s determination and courage ultimately paid off and gave the nation a dream come true. The Georgians are now moving forward with great enthusiasm and the ambition to present themselves on the European stage and continue to surprise. Further celebrations cannot be ruled out against Portugal, the Czech Republic and Turkey.
