The nation of less than four million people, bordering the Black Sea and ranked 74 in world football by FIFA have become most nation’s ‘other team’ in the tournament.
Having made the Round of 16, they will now face the might of Rodrigo’s Spain this weekend, with their 2-0 win over Portugal confirming a first ever knockout phase berth in a major tournament.
But ask any City fan and they will likely tell you they already had a soft spot for Georgia.
That’s because no English club has had more Georgian players than Manchester City, with our connection to the Eastern European country going back almost three decades.
It began with City Chairman Francis Lee being tipped off about an outstanding young talent playing for Dinamo Tbilisi and, having watched a couple of grainy videos the 21-year-old in question – Georgi Kinkladze – Lee reached a gentleman’s agreement with Tbilisi president Merab Jordania that the Blues could have first refusal on the skilful playmaker.
Not long after, Kinkladze scored in a 5-0 win over Wales and scouts began making enquiries about this gifted footballer who based his game on Diego Maradona.
Legend has it that Colin Bell and Tony Book went to watch the return Euro ’96 qualifier between Wales and Georgia in June 1995 at Cardiff Arms Park.
The Welsh had been reduced to 10 men with barely 30 minutes on the clock thanks to a typically crude challenge by Vinnie Jones, keen to stamp his mark on proceedings and, in this case, the inside thigh of Mikheil Kavelashvili.
With 73 minutes played and Wales desperately holding on at 0-0, the ball was played to a 21-year-old Georgi Kinkladze who moved towards the box unchallenged before lofting a sumptuous 25-yard chip over Neville Southall to secure a 1-0 win for the Georgians.
The City scouts – both Club legend, of course – are believed to have travelled back to Manchester to inform Chairman Francis Lee – “we need to sign this, guy and quick”.
Lee sanctioned a £2million move for Kinkladze and after a couple of training sessions, new City boss Alan Ball claimed that fans would be literally clinging to the Maine Road rafters to see the Georgian play.
And he wasn’t far wrong.
‘Kinky’ – as he quickly became known by City fans – turned out to be a magical talent, capable of seemingly impossible grace and almost balletic movements.
He was soon the idol of the Blues’ faithful and the one shining light in an otherwise difficult season, scoring perhaps the greatest goal Maine Road had ever witnessed in a 2-1 win over Southampton.
Kinky’s form attracted interest from Celtic, Liverpool and Barcelona – among others – and with Ball’s team struggling near the foot of the Premier League, Chairman Lee was keen to ensure his prized asset remained with the Club.
In order to do this, he wanted other Georgians at Manchester City and when Georgia and former Tbilisi team-mate Kavelashvili became available, the striker arrived in March 1996 and began training with the Blues.
Memorably, he made his debut against Manchester United and scored with a close range finish after a knockdown from Niall Quinn to make it 1-1, though his start had come at the expense of Uwe Rosler who was dropped to the bench, later replacing the Georgian striker and levelling with a thunderous shot and angry reaction to boss Ball.
For all Kinkladze’s magic, City were relegated at the end of the 1995/96 season and his adoring public believed it was inevitable that, as he left the pitch in floods of tears after a 2-2 draw with Liverpool confirmed our demotion from the top flight, he had surely played his last game for the club.
An outpouring of love towards Kinkladze and his close relationship with Franny Lee, however, ensured that he would stay with the Blues in order to help win promotion at the first attempt.
It was a gamble by the player, but still aged only 23, one he felt he owed to his chairman and the supporters.
“It was tough,” Kinkladze said in later years,
“It’s true I had chances to leave. Barcelona and other sides had expressed an interest, but I couldn’t go. I wanted to help City back into the Premier League, so it wasn’t a hard decision for me to make.”
Kavelashvili stayed another season, too, but was unable to find the goals that would save manager Ball or help the Club back to the top flight.
Kinky had been the constant target of the second tier’s hatchet men, with the clear feeling that by stopping him, you stopped City winning.
He was injured for the final game of the 1996/97 season against Reading, but with City supporters making it a Kinkladze celebration day with Georgian flags, banners, and songs throughout while the electronic scoreboard flashed messages ‘Don’t go, Gio!’.
When the Blues No.10 was paraded around Maine Road at the end of a 3-2 win, it felt almost like the Club were unfairly tugging on his heartstrings somewhat, leaving Kinky to say words along the lines of, “How can I turn my back on this love?”
Incredibly, he agreed to stay on another season, but City’s plight grew worse.
The Kavelashvili experiment hadn’t worked – he scored just three goals in 29 appearances – and the first half of the 1997/98 campaign under manager Frank Clarke was pretty awful, with just five league wins in the first 20 games.
Failure to secure a work permit meant he was loaned out to Grasshoppers Zurich.
Two more Georgians arrived around the turn of the year – both central defenders – the first being Murtaz Shelia and six weeks later, Kakhaber Tskhadadze.
Both were excellent additions, seasoned internationals and well-suited to the rough and tumble nature of the English second tier.
However, neither defender or a battered and bruised Kinkladze could stop City eventually being relegated to the third tier for the first time in the Club’s history.
Kinky’s price for loyalty was to be dropped by new manager Joe Royle in the closing weeks, though he took a private jet back for the final game of the season away to Stoke having just played for his country, still desperate to help save the Club.
He would be transferred to Ajax and later Derby County, but he was never able to reach the heights he had in his first season at Maine Road, save for the odd wonder goal here and there in the following two campaigns.
City’s three-Georgian representatives became two in 1998/99, but when the ‘Eagle of the Air’, Tskhadadze, tore his ACL early in the new campaign and Shelia suffered a career-threatening injury a few weeks later against Reading, neither would ever play for the Club again.
By March 2000, our four Georgian players – who won a combined 154 caps for their nation and 181 appearances for City - had become none at all, but the affection for Kinkladze and that period of five years when the Georgia flag was a regular sight on the Kippax is still fondly remembered by the Blues faithful.
