Odishi 1919

Leva Kutalia left as top scorer of the Erovnuli Liga in 2019, spent years at Dinamo Tbilisi and other leading sides, and in 2026 came back to Zugdidi to play for the club that raised him. The name over the badge has changed more than once since he first kicked a ball there, but the town's football never stopped: 20 May 1919 is remembered locally as the day the game arrived in Zugdidi, and it gives the club its "1919." The "Odishi" part is older still, drawn from the historical name for the Samegrelo region.

What plays today under that name was built in 2015-2016, when a club called Lazika was renamed. By then Zugdidi had already been through Dinamo and Mglebi, winning the Georgian Soviet Cup twice in the 1970s and 80s and taking the second-tier Pirveli Liga title on separate occasions in the 2000s under those earlier names. Odishi 1919 has never reached an Erovnuli Liga or Georgian Cup, but the club has kept climbing: promoted from Liga 4 in 2024, then finishing third in Liga 3 in 2025 and going up again through the play-offs, this time into Erovnuli Liga 2.

They play in blue at Ganmukhuri Central Stadium, a ground that holds around 2,000. Soso Chedia came through the same academy before Kutalia, went on to win a Georgian championship and play for the national team, and later returned to coaching in the game he started with locally.

Promotion has put Odishi back in range of Zugdidi's old regional rivals from western Georgia, sides with the same Samegrelo roots and the same memory of who used to beat whom in the lower divisions.