From City footballer to president of Georgia

when Mikheil Kavelashvili (7/22/1971, Bolnisi, Georgia, USSR) stopped kicking the ball as he had been doing since his youth, he returned to her Georgia native and tried to lead the Football Federation. But he was met with the rejection of Michael Platini that, in his last year of mandate at the head of UEFAhis election was blocked because he did not have a university degree. At the end of December, when he was elected as the only candidate to lead the presidency of his country, protesters gathered in front of the parliament of Tbilisi They showed their rejection by showing their university diplomas. An electoral college consisting of 300 people, the majority of the party Georgian dreamhe was elected with 224 votes in favor out of a total of 225 present.

City relegation

Like many young Georgians, the football goal is to land on a team of Russia and Mikheilwhich started on Tbilisi Dynamocame in 1995 to Spartak Vladikavkaz where he won Premier League The Russian scored 12 goals. The striker contacted a City of Manchester when the ‘Sky Blues’ were an ‘ordinary’ club that flirted with relegation and lived in the shadow of the mighty United of Ferguson. He started training on March 1, 1996 and could not be registered until the 28th because he needed a work permit. More than scoring on his debut against the dreaded United in the old one Maine Road of city (match, they lost 2-3), Kavelashvili He played 28 games. Four are in premier and the rest of the Nationwide League Division One (the current second championship) where they were relegated in the same season.

He spent 1996-97 in the Second Division and, with just two goals in 24 games, the club decided not to renew his work permit so he went to Switzerland where in grasshoppers He became the league champion in 1998. He passed Lucernehe Zurichhe Zion and the Aarau to retire Basel in 2005-2006 playing only 14 games. It is international for Georgia between 1991 and 2002 in 46 games where he scored 9 goals.

From pro-European to anti-Western

Changing shirts up to 10 times probably influenced his diverse change of opinion about political issues. Since he could not lead the Federation, he entered as a parliamentarian in 2016 for the party Georgian dreama coalition of parties spanning a spectrum between pro-European leftists, pro-Western liberals and anti-NATO nationalists created by the billionaire businessman Bidzina Ivanishvili. Later they turned to Eurosceptic, outright conservative and pro-Russian positions.

Kavelashvili decided in 2022, together with two other parliamentarians, to create a satellite party of Georgian dream, People Power, which raised the anti-Western populist flag, accusing the opposition led by congressmen from the American Democratic Party and being a mouthpiece of Russian rhetoric, promoting laws similar to those used by Kremlin to suppress freedom of expression and LGBTQ+ rights.

The example of George Weah

He will be the second footballer to become president of his country: George WeahBallon d’Or in 1995 and African footballer of the year in 1989 and 1995, directed Liberia from 2018 to January 2024. At a minimum, Weah He ran for election which he lost twice before being elected president. He became an ambassador UNICEF and continues to work for the prevention of AIDS, the promotion of vocational training schools, the fight against the military use of children and literacy campaigns in his country. In 1994 he took control of a Liberian football club, the Monrovia Junior Professionalswhich shelters children with limited resources. In addition to teaching them how to play soccer, they tried to make sure they didn’t neglect their studies because the only requirement to join was not to leave school. To be able to show a diploma when asked.