Georgia

Georgia had never beaten a genuine footballing power at a major tournament until the summer of 2024, when a side built around Khvicha Kvaratskhelia went to Germany for its first European Championship and put Portugal away 2–0 in the group stage.

The federation behind all this, the Georgian Football Federation, only became an independent body on 15 February 1990, after functioning inside a Soviet-era structure since 1936; membership of UEFA and FIFA followed in 1992. The national side, nicknamed the Crusaders, played its first match before that recognition was even complete, drawing 2–2 with Lithuania in Tbilisi in May 1990, a year before Georgian independence was declared. A first competitive fixture under the new federation did not come until September 1994.

Kvaratskhelia captains the team now and shared the tournament's top scorer standing at Euro 2024, but the record for appearances belongs to Guram Kashia, who has earned 129 caps. Willy Sagnol, in charge since 2021, is the coach who took the team to that first Euros. The World Cup has stayed out of reach throughout. Matches against Armenia are still framed as the Caucasian derby, while games with Russia carry the weight of politics rather than football alone. It is a rivalry set the team has carried since well before it ever won anything at all — since a federation, newly split from Moscow, sent a side out to draw with Lithuania in a Tbilisi that was, on paper, not yet part of an independent country.