Former Manchester City striker Mikheil Kavelashvili set to become president of Georgia

Mikheil Kavelashvili, a former striker for Manchester City, has indicated that he will run for president of Georgia. The 53-year-old was a member of City from 1995 to 1997. He is most known for scoring in his first game, a 3-2 loss to Manchester United at Maine Road in April 1996, just weeks before Alan Ball's squad was demoted from the Premier League.

Though he did not play enough games for his work visa to be extended, Kavelashvili went on to score two more goals for Manchester City in the First Division as they finished in 14th place. The next summer, he went permanently after being loaned to Swiss club Grasshoppers. 

He is the most recent in a long line of former football players to run for public office in Georgia. Former Schalke and Hertha Berlin defender Levan Kobiashvili is a member of the Georgian parliament, while former AC Milan defender Kakha Kaladze, who won the Champions League with the Italian powerhouses in both 2003 and 2007, has been the mayor of the capital city of Tbilisi since 2017.

 President's post is primarily ceremonial in Georgia

Kavelashvili was brought in from Dinamo Tbilisi on transfer deadline day, and City, who had signed another Georgia international Georgi Kinkladze in the summer of 1995, bet that he would save them from relegation. After failing to bounce back after just earning two points from their first eleven games, they were demoted on goal differential despite gaining seven points from their last three games.

In Georgia, the president's post is primarily ceremonial, but Kavelashvili's Georgian Dream party has practical authority because it controls the parliament. People's Power, a faction of the Georgian Dream party that Kavelashvili co-founded, has supported anti-LGBT and foreign agent legislation and is regarded as one of the most overtly pro-Russian factions in Georgian politics.