Search: 'Georgi Kinkladze'
Stories
March issue available now online and in store
Hodder & Stoughton, £20
Reviewed by Mark O’Brien
From WSC 374, March 2018
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The week after their neighbours had become champions of Europe, Manchester City finally won back the respect of their fans – though they made it difficult, as Ian Farrell recalled in WSC 212, October 2012
Once upon a time, Manchester City fans sang that every run that Kinky made was blinding but, as Dan Brennan reports, the Georgian now just heads for dead ends
When Gio Kinkladze rejected Derby County’s offer of a new contract and a 50 per cent wage cut in the summer of 2003, there was little doubt in his mind that a return to the Premiership was just around the corner. What followed instead was an increasingly forlorn and humiliating attempt to secure employment in Britain and abroad. Plagued by injury and fitness problems at Derby, he only showed glimpses of the skills that had made him the darling of the Kippax at Manchester City, but he was only 30 and still possessed the dancing feet and quick brain to compensate for any decline in speed and increased girth.