Like you, I also look for the books of Mikheil Kakabadze and Guram Panjikidze and I almost knew all stories of these great people about World and European Championships. About 25 years ago, I served in the army of the Soviet Union in Ukraine, near the border of Poland, with two good Georgians – Giorgi Bakhtadze and Misha Gogia.

I was fan of the Danish team and Preben Elkjaer Larsen. In 1985, I watched the match of Danish and the Soviet Union teams (4:2 in the favor of the Danish team) in the army. Can you imagine, only I from 100 soldiers supported Denmark. Moreover, our military unit was formed by Lenin in 1919 and it was called “Iron Division”! After the goals of Elkjaer and Laudrup I clapped so hard that I must have been taken to the military prison but love of football saved me – Bezhenar, major commandant of the unit, turned out former football referee and he saved me.

Bezhenar was collecting football badges and when I gave him one of “Dinamo”, he made friends with me. He offered me to watch World Championship 1986 at his home! But that June I was sent to the shooting range – one-month study showing war was going on between Ukrainian and Belarusian military districts near the border of Poland. So, I sometimes left my position, ran to remote village and watched matches of Denmark-Uruguay, Argentina-England, Brazil-Poland and others.

It was a really brilliant championship and finally, I gave some presents to him and he let me watch the final. Suddenly, the light was turned on. He brought small black-white TV. In short, I who was dressed in uniform of the Soviet army forgot “Red Homeland”, army, boots, position and oath of the Soviet soldier… I was enjoying playing of Maradona.

Who could have thought that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I, Mamuka Kvaratskhelia will attend World or European Championship, like the abovementioned journalists? Not only attend but also work in Poland and Ukraine! In short, I am writing this letter from Poland and let all readers of “World Sport” make their wishes come true…

Because of my profession, I often go abroad and I must tell you that after morning prayers, I always enter website of “World Sport”… I often heard the same from Georgians living abroad and I was very happy when managers of this website told me that they would keep in touch with me and to tell them everything interesting I knew about European Championship. So, I am doing it and perhaps, the readers will have fun…
 

UEFA media-officer Mamuka Kvaratskhelia specially for worldsport.ge from Poland