Georgia: Football mix-up leaves commentator red-faced

 

A football commentator has apologised for confusing two opposing teams during an international match.

While describing the action during the opening minutes of Georgia's under-19 home game against Portugal, Sandro Tsnobiladze repeatedly got the two sides the wrong way round, even telling viewers that Georgia had scored a penalty in the third minute when it was actually the visitors' goal. Despite the fact it was Portugal's Pedro Rodrigues who found the back of the net, he announced that the goal belonged to Georgia's Otar Kiteishvili.
It wasn't until the end of the fifth minute, when a large caption declaring "Georgia 0 - Portugal 1" appeared on the screen, that he realised his mistake. "I would like to apologise to the viewers," he said when the error hit home. "It was Portugal who scored, not the Georgian footballer." His confusion may have stemmed from the fact that the teams were playing in each other's current first colours - Portugal in white and Georgia in red.
But Tsnobiladze is a well-known commentator at Georgia's national public broadcaster, and many viewers were unimpressed by the error. "Is he watching the game from the Caucasus mountains?" one Facebook user asks sarcastically, among a flurry of social media comments. Another football fan says: "I was watching the game on TV, when I saw this I turned it off." Some people are more charitable though. "Things like this happen, it's alright," one person writes on the commentator's Facebook page. Another simply reassures him: "You are my favourite commentator."