Ex-Man City footballer set to be next Georgian president

Georgia’s ruling party has picked former Manchester City footballer Mikheil Kavelashvili as its presidential candidate, the chairman of Georgian Dream Bidzina Ivanishvili announced at a briefing Wednesday.

The move means that Kavelashvili, an anti-Western political hard-liner who was prevented from running as a president of the football federation in 2025 because he has no higher education, will now likely become Georgia’s next president.

For the first time ever, the president will be elected indirectly by a 300-member electoral college consisting of members of parliament and local government representatives, which are dominated by the Russia-friendly Georgian Dream.

“I am sure that Mikheil Kavelashvili will fully restore the temporarily stolen dignity to the presidential institute,” said Ivanishvili, Georgia’s richest man and a figure who the opposition and critics blame for the country’s pivot away from the EU and toward Russia.

“There is no doubt that Mikheil Kavelashvili will not be in the service of foreign powers, but in the service of the Georgian state,” added Ivanishvili, taking a jab at current pro-European president, Salome Zourabichvili, who is in open conflict with the ruling party, which is trying to impeach her over her visits to Brussels.

Having founded his own right-wing Euroskeptic party People’s Power after leaving Georgian Dream in 2022, Kavelashvili is no newbie to politics. During his football career, he played for the Georgian national team, Dinamo Tbilisi and briefly for Manchester City in the mid-1990s.

Georgia has been roiled by protests after the contested Oct. 26 parliamentary election in which the ruling party claimed a landslide victory. Zourabichvili, the opposition parties and independent observers say the election was rigged.

The presidential elections are scheduled to take place on Dec. 14.

Dato Parulava contributed to this report.