Giorgi Mamardashvili had a face like thunder.
It was 2021 and Mamardashvili was just six games into his Valencia career, a rare example of a Georgian playing for a big club in one of Europe’s biggest leagues. The man Liverpool believe could be their long-term No 1 had come with a fine reputation, but this game — a taxing trip to Sevilla — was unravelling dramatically.
With three goals conceded in the first 21 minutes and a humiliating mistake already playing on loop across social media, this was not the welcome he had hoped for.
On the short plane journey home that evening with the rest of his team-mates, Mamardashvili bowed his head and remained quiet. Those close to him kept their distance when he emerged from the airport. In truth, there wasn’t much to discuss.
Mamardashvili, then aged 20 and having just moved from Dinamo Tbilisi, would not play again in the first team for almost five months — a long time to stew over such a disastrous performance.
Yet the next day, Mamardashvili was a different man. “It’s his special power,” says Mikha Gabechava, his friend and a scout for Belgian side KAA Gent who first got to know Mamardashvili when he was on work experience at a local agency. “To basically forget that something bad has happened. He knows exactly when to press the off switch and refocus.”
This was the first major setback Mamardashvili had faced in the spotlight. Scrutiny in Georgia was not non-existent but was never as fierce as in La Liga. At Valencia, where every game is screened across the world, there is no hiding place.
Giorgi Mamardashvili has grown accustomed to scrutiny (Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
Not that Mamardashvili is the type to shy away. His old coach, Giorgi Chiabrishvili, who handed him a senior debut during a loan spell at Locomotive Tbilisi in 2020, told The Athletic another story that further underlines his strength of mind.
“His first game for me was terrible,” he said. “Dinamo Batumi scored four goals and he made a bad mistake for the first goal, but I saw enough in him from his reaction to know about his character. After the mistake, he immediately ran to the ball to speed up the restart as quickly as possible and from there I knew he would be a great goalkeeper and someone I could lean on.”
Such traits served the 23-year-old well in the years that followed and should do in the future when he finally moves to Liverpool: he will spend the next year at Valencia before moving to Merseyside in 2025 after agreeing a deal worth £25million ($33m) plus £4m ($5.3m) in add-ons.
Liverpool’s current No 1, Alisson, was consulted during the pursuit of Mamardashvili as he passed both the data and eye test. Next season, he will be given the opportunity to compete for a starting place, with the long-term future of Caoimhin Kelleher now uncertain.
The strong mentality that was carved out as he was developing is now rock solid. Mistakes still happen occasionally, but they are few and far between and he deals with setbacks even better now.
Through conversations with people who know him best, Mamardashvili’s personality — focused, fearless and resilient — is what seems to set him apart from the rest. Within the Georgian Football Federation, he is discussed as a generational talent who has all the attributes to become the best in his field.
David Webb, the assistant coach of the national team, agrees. “Moving to Liverpool will help him kick on even further,” he says, “He’ll probably go on to be one of the top three or four goalkeepers in the world.”
Mamardashvili is one of Europe’s best shot-stoppers (Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images)
The bright lights and towering stands of Anfield feel a long way from the tiny Georgian village of Khoni, where Mamardashvili grew up.
Back then, his dream was to move to his capital city and play for the biggest team in the country, Dinamo Tbilisi. He trained in a small yard with his father, Davit, a former professional goalkeeper himself, and there was no backup plan. It was simply football.
Aged nine, he landed a trial and started to progress at Dinamo, a club with modern facilities that put their best youngsters through school, but as the years wore on, senior opportunities remained out of reach.
He went on loan to city rivals Locomotive and it was there — under Chiabrishvili, a coach renowned in Georgia for his dedication to playing out from the back — that he began to flourish.
Chiabrishvili speaks glowingly of Mamardashvili but is honest in his assessment. “When I arrived he wasn’t playing, so I gave him the freedom to do two things: one to make mistakes without any pressure, but also to never kick the ball long, no matter what the scenario.”
This was a challenge that required both time and patience. Mamardashvili had always been known for his work ethic and commitment. There was frustration when it went wrong, but he never backed away from the process and continued to work on other areas of his game, with distribution the toughest to master.
“He progressed every day and was not afraid to make mistakes,” Chiabrishvili adds. “Soon, his team-mates started to struggle to score against him in training and then the stronger the opponent became, the better he played. What I remember most was how calm we became as a team with him in goal.”
The breakthrough for Mamardashvili — who studied clips of his idol, the Germany goalkeeper Manuel Neuer — came in September 2020 when Locomotive featured in the Europa League and beat Dinamo Moscow. Any game against Russian opposition draws huge interest in Georgia, so all eyes were already on the team and the young goalkeeper stood out in Locomotive’s 2-1 victory.
When Locomotive played in Spain against Granada a week later, representatives from Valencia were watching. The Spanish club were already aware of his talent and made a move for him nine months later, initially on loan at the academy before turning it into a permanent deal.
Mamardashvili in action for Locomotive Tbilisi against Granada, where he impressed Valencia scouts (David S. Bustamante/Soccrates/Getty Images)
By quirk, it was the former Liverpool goalkeeper coach Jose Ochotorena who helped prepare Mamardashvili for his debut when three other senior goalkeepers were out injured at the start of the 2021-22 season.
It was a daunting prospect. Mamardashvili was big enough not to have to worry about physical size, but there were still gaps in his game and while he was committed to learning Spanish, he was shy in front of his team-mates, which caused other problems.
Ochotorena, who helped Jerzy Dudek when Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005, encouraged him to engage and interact with others. Double training sessions aided his physical transformation (he now stands at 6ft 6in; 198cm) and he kept his place in the team, even when the Netherlands international Jasper Cillessen returned. Ochotorena ironed out creases in his game and worked on his stand-out strength — shot-stopping.
Handling fame was initially a little difficult. In those early days at Valencia, he received thousands of Instagram messages and then his social media accounts were hacked. After an impressive performance against Real Madrid early in his career, he stopped for hours after the game to sign autographs outside the Mestalla, much to the amusement of his team-mates when they found out.
It was a lot to process for a quiet, unassuming young man, who has stayed humble despite his rapid rise. That grounded character helped him deal with setbacks like that chastening Sevilla defeat.
Now, three years on, Mamardashvili is established as one of Europe’s best young goalkeepers and an idol in his country alongside the Napoli attacker Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, who also started out at Dinamo Tbilisi.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is another Georgian hero (Ozan Kose /AFP via Getty Images)
It is a responsibility he has learned to embrace. In Khoni there is a mural with his imposing frame worked into the national flag accompanied by the words: ‘The great Georgian Wall’.
It was his saves in the penalty shootout win over Greece that sealed Georgia’s place in Euro 2024 and his performances at the tournament, especially in the 1-1 draw with Czech Republic, earned him another mural in Batumi.
“Our team feels very safe with him in goal because they know he will come and collect or deal with the situation,” Webb tells The Athletic. “His work ethic is incredible and so is his attention to detail. He did so much preparation ahead of the Greece penalty shootout that we just knew they were not going to score all five of their kicks.”
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Webb also believes Mamardashvili is ready to step up. “I’ve had one-on-ones with him to find out more about his personality and he seems very level-headed, very settled, very focused on his career, and very ambitious about what he wants to achieve because he certainly came through the hard way,” he adds. “Khvicha is the golden boy, but Mamardashvili is not far behind him now he’s got this Liverpool move.”
In 2025, the Premier League will find out if he is ready to take that next step.
(Top photo: Pat Elmont – UEFA/UEFA via Getty Images)
