Georgi Kinkladze: The Flawed Genius That Gave Us Hope

The Georgian Maradona

But amidst the pain, for many fans Kinkladze was off-limits because he was one of the few players to offer anything above mediocrity. In a way that is a tad harsh on others in the squad who were weighed down by the most mediocre manager of them all. But Kinkladze had something we’d never seen before. Because THAT goal against Southampton in March 1996, where he slalomed through half the opposition before placing Dave Beasant on his backside and then dinking the ball into the net, will be remembered more than the entirety of the ten or even twenty games that surrounded it. So good, it even won Match Of The Day’s March competition for Goal Of The Month. Because we live, we follow football, we exist, to witness moments like that. That goal did not win the league like Aguero’s strike, or the FA Cup like Yaya Toure’s goal against Stoke City or put one hand on another league title and confirm immortality like Vinny’s thunder-bastard against Leicester, but it was still special, and more skilful than any of those other more momentous goals. And just a few months earlier he’d scored a goal almost as good against Middlesbrough, largely forgotten in the fog of a 4-1 defeat.

And so for many City fans there was a dependency on Kinkladze. The news of a car crash prior to games against Crewe and Oxford United sent shudders through an already nervy fan base. Thankfully Kinkladze was not badly hurt, having wrapped his Ferrari around a motorway bridge’s supports. This is what happens when a poor team contains a single gem. Someone whose skill on the ball is at odds with those around him. Kinkladze gave us hope. Hope of better times, hope that Manchester City could be better, be contenders. Hope is what keeps many football fans going after all. What’s more, he was also a play-maker, and football has a special place in its heart for such players. We want to be entertained, we want to be off our seat, marvelling at the skill shown by our boys in blue. And in the club’s lowest moments, there was a felling, wrongly, that there was only one player threatening to do that. And that is what fired up Kinkladze to perform. As he once commented, ‘The most important thing when you play is to hear the fans clap. And when you retire the most important thing is to remember that sound. I remember like it was yesterday’.

Kinkladze’s debut season in English football had attracted the attention of some big clubs, but the Georgian remained at City as they finished a disappointing 14^th in the First Division the following season. This was a season where managers were collected almost as much as points, City managed within a four-month period by Alan Ball, Asa Hartford, Steve Coppell, Phil Neal and Frank Clark. Kinkladze was still attracting the adoring glances of other clubs by season-end, leading to a 25,000 strong petition from City flans imploring him to say. Wheeled out after City’s final home game to greet the fans, the campaign infuriated other members of the squad, annoyed at his special treatment. It worked though, and he would remain for another season, in which City imploded further, dropping for the first time in their history into the third tier of English football.

Right Place, Wrong Time

Georgi Kinkladze’s timing was terrible. His three years at City coincided with the club’s greatest ever decline. Two relegations and demotion to the third tier of English football. Sheer bad luck, though some would connect the dots and come to a different conclusion. Kinkladze was never really the problem though, at a club that was the king of cock ups.
Joe Royle would disagree later stating, ‘To the supporters, he was the only positive in all that time. To me, he was a big negative. I am not saying that City’s ills were all down to Kinkladze, but there was too much about the whole Kinkladze cult phenomenon that wasn’t right. Too often since his arrival, the team had under-performed. I couldn’t help deducing that contrary to popular opinion, he would be my weak link not my strong one.’ And once Joe Royle arrived in February 1998, his time was up, the rumour being that Royle stated it was “him or me”. City got £5m, more than doubling their initial outlay, and the club would go on to secure back-to-back promotions followed by yet another relegation. Striker Paul Walsh has said Kinkladze was ‘the catalyst for City’s problems’ because Alan Ball indulged him. ‘He didn’t make enough goals and didn’t tackle or head it. His overall contribution was not enough.’

And that “overall contribution” is key to the debate. Key to how you evaluate a flair player that is interested only in looking forward and creating goals. A player who was not interested in tracking back, in running until he dropped. A player whose poor English made it hard to build up a real understanding with the players around him. Michael Cox wrote an article in the Guardian in 2017 suggesting the problem was that Kinkladze showed the inability of the Premier League to adapt. Clubs were trying to recreate the success of Eric Cantona at United, and his role in a team, but the rigid 4-4-2 system prevalent in the league was not suited to Kinkladze’s skill set.

And so you can see, the debate a single player can cause. Was he at the wrong club for his talents or part of the problems of that club? And how do you define the talent he had when he spent just a single season in the English Premier League and encountered problems in most of his career elsewhere? I guess you don’t define it. You just try to enjoy the good times, brief as they were. The problem was that Alan Ball tried to build a team around a single player. And that not only failed as a plan, but it put far too much pressure on one player’s shoulders. Kinkladze could not operate in a 4-4-2, and Ball’s attempts to shoehorn him into a system cost the team dearly. After Ball departed, Frank Clark was faced with the same dilemma. It was these dilemmas that hampered the efforts of other players, that made us think Kinkladze was our only hope when there were many others in the squad who had as big a part to play. 

The sad fact is that Kinkladze would rarely sparkle on a football pitch again. Accusations of laziness and a lack of fitness would dog him constantly. His pace would be lost with weight concerns and a succession of injuries that would temper his effectiveness. His bad timing would continue. He would join Ajax to replace a departing player that never departed. Shunted to the left and lacking his pace of old, he struggled. He was never an adaptable player and struggled with the Ajax system. He would move on to Derby County, and despite rediscovering his form briefly, it would not last. The club had its own financial difficulties and Kinkladze’s healthy wage was used as a stick to beat him with. Further failed attempts to resurrect his career would see him retire at the modest age of 33.

The only remaining question is what would have happened if 1995’s Georgi Kinkladze was dropped into this current City side. Sadly, I am not sure it would work, because a Pep side is about far more than skill alone. That’s merely the starting block. In a Daily Mail interview last year, Kinkladze suggested he could perform for a Pep side: ‘I am blessed to have come to England and played football, so I would change nothing. But sometimes I see the way City play and think it would have suited me. It is like a team on a PlayStation, isn’t it? Silva to Sterling to De Bruyne. Boom, boom, boom. If I had the ball now, I could pass it to Aguero without even having to look up. I know it. But every skilful player thinks they could play in this Guardiola team. It’s not that easy.  You would have to play at 100 per cent every game. Even Messi — if he didn’t play well — would be on the bench.’ Uwe Rosler probably summed it up when he said: ‘Technically he was the best I played with and he made us exciting. People came just to watch him. But he wouldn’t get in Guardiola’s side because he would not have worked hard enough.’

We will never know of course. Georgi Kinkladze was born at the wrong time to collide with the rise of Pep Guardiola, manager edition. Instead he became the unwitting and unwilling focus of a club in decline. The solution to and cause of all of City’s problems. But there is and always will be a wealth of appreciation for one of the most skilful and entertaining players ever to pull on the blue shirt. After all, all the runs that Kinky makes are winding. And all the goals that City score are blinding.

Thanks for the memories Georgi.