BATUMI, Georgia — They used to worry that the Adjarabet Arena, with its sinuous arches and illuminated exterior, would turn into something of a white elephant. Batumi, after all, is a quaint resort town; it had little need for a 20,000-capacity stadium. Dinamo, the soccer team that was to call it home, generally required seating for only half that number.
And then, at the start of April, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia arrived.
“The city lived from one match to the next,” Tariel Varshanidze, a prominent voice in Dinamo’s fan scene, said. “The atmosphere changed radically.” Matches in the Erovnuli Liga, Georgia’s top division, suddenly had the same air as “top Champions League games,” he said.