Dinamo Tbilisi II

Tbilisi's biggest club runs its academy out of the Vitali Daraselia Dinamo Sports Academy. The reserve side carries no separate founding date of its own — it exists as an arm of the parent club, formed in 1925 — and plays out its matches at the academy ground itself, a compact setup holding just 1,000 people.

The team has spent its recent years working through the lower tiers of Georgian football, and the shape of that climb tells its own story: third place in Liga 3 in 2018 and 2019, then runner-up finishes in 2020 and 2021, each time short of the title. The breakthrough came in 2022, when Dinamo Tbilisi II won Erovnuli Liga 2 outright. In the David Kipiani Cup, the reserves have gone as far as the third round, in 2022, before Sioni Bolnisi ended the run.

Derby weekends in this division belong to the other half of Tbilisi's football map. Saburtalo Tbilisi II is the closest rival, and Iberia 1999 II supplies the other regular test.

The academy's real currency, though, is the players who pass through and out the other side. Khvicha Kvaratskhelia went from the Dinamo youth ranks straight into senior football without settling into the reserve side.