Tonight, Georgia travel to the Aviva Stadium to take on the Republic of Ireland in a Euro 2020 qualifier. It’s the third consecutive qualifying campaign in which the countries have been in the same group.
Two and a half years ago, Georgia did a ‘Celtic swing’ in that they played Ireland and Wales away in World Cup qualifiers in the space of four days, and those watching closely will have noticed something unusual with their kits.
In Dublin, they were wearing their first-choice kit of white shirts, red shorts and white socks, a straightforward adidas teamwear style with ghosted white stripes down the sides of the torso and an Aertex-like perforated material. They had also worn this in their opening game, at home to Austria.
Georgia were able to wear white shirts in all ten of their qualifying games, but there were two distinct variations, as would be seen in Cardiff.
With Uefa not keen on the overall clash presented by red-white-red against white-red-white, Wales wore all-red (re-purposing the home shorts from their previous kit) while Georgia were in all-white.
However, the numbers on the shirts were now black instead of red.
This was to be the way for the rest of the campaign, with white-red-white worn at home to Moldova and Ireland and all-white used in both games against Serbia, at home to Wales and away to Moldova and Austria.
Now in a strip, they continue to alternate their shorts colours, but black numbers are standard regardless of which permutation is worn.
