Northern Ireland have never won a game in League B of the Nations League. They have now. Shea Charles poked a finish past Giorgi Mamardashvili in the 98th minute in Tbilisi, well past the six minutes the fourth official had signalled, and after one more VAR check the 1-0 was confirmed.
The goal was the fourth thing Charles tried. He put a header wide from an Isaac Price cross in the first half and felt straight away he should have done better with it. Mamardashvili stopped him from close range on 75 minutes. He dragged another effort wide with five minutes left. Then, in a box full of bodies, he got a leg to the ball and it went in. O'Neill called the performance "colossal", which is a strange word for a scruffy winner and exactly the right one for the ninety minutes around it.
The other Charles saved the penalty
Before the winner there was a save that mattered more. Georgia came out for the second half at a completely different tempo, and eight minutes after the restart Giorgi Chakvetadze, on at the break, slid Georges Mikautadze in unmarked. Pierce Charles, Shea's younger brother, on loan at Queens Park Rangers, got down to it. Ten minutes after that VAR decided Daniel Ballard had tugged Luka Lochoshvili's shirt in the box, and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia stepped up.
The Paris St-Germain forward is a Ballon d'Or nominee. His penalty was tame and it went low to the goalkeeper's left, which is where Pierce Charles had already committed. He parried it away. He also denied Otar Kiteishvili in the same half. That is a 21-year-old goalkeeper on loan in the Championship keeping out a player whose club won the Champions League last season, and it earned Northern Ireland their first competitive clean sheet since October 2024.
A strange night in an emptied stadium
The Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena was supposed to be shut. Uefa ordered the fixture behind closed doors after crowd trouble at Georgia's home game with Armenia in March 2025. Then around 60 Northern Ireland supporters who had bought tickets before the sanction was announced were allowed in, and then thousands of Georgian schoolchildren were let in too. The noise that produces is nothing like a Nations League night and the first half played out accordingly, slow and careful, the best chance of it a Giorgi Kvernadze header that Trai Hume cleared off the line.
A back three that had never played together
O'Neill picked a defence of Ballard, Ciaron Brown and Tom Atcheson who had not started a game as a trio before, and they got through it. That is the part of the night he will take into Monday rather than the goal. It will have to change again, though: Ballard picked up an injury late on.
Northern Ireland are back at Windsor Park on Monday against Hungary, kick-off 19:45 BST, three points into a four-game window that looked a lot harder on Friday morning. Georgia, for all their second-half territory, have nothing from a home opener and a forward who has now missed the kind of moment O'Neill spent the summer studying. He sat on Fifa's Technical Study Group at the World Cup and came away struck by how many matches turned on one piece of individual quality. On Friday his own most expensive player provided it instead.
Match facts: Georgia 0-1 Northern Ireland, Uefa Nations League League B, Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena, Tbilisi, Friday 25 September 2026. Scorer: Shea Charles 90+8. Pierce Charles saved a Khvicha Kvaratskhelia penalty on 65 minutes. Northern Ireland's first win at this level of the competition. Next: Northern Ireland v Hungary, Monday, 19:45 BST. Source: BBC Sport NI (Jonathan Bradley, in Tbilisi).
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