Giorgi Kinkladze arrived from Dinamo Tbilisi in the summer of 1995 — a quiet, low-slung playmaker from Georgia that most of English football had never heard of. It took Maine Road about three games to understand what it had. Low centre of gravity, both feet, and a way of drifting past tackles that made Premier League defenders look like they were wading through water.
The moment everyone keeps is 16 March 1996, at home to Southampton: picking the ball up wide on the right, slaloming through half the visiting defence, and dinking it, softly and absurdly, over the goalkeeper. Maine Road stood as one. It still gets replayed whenever anyone lists the Premier League's greatest solo goals.
City went down that spring, on the day, in the cruellest way. Kinkladze — courted by far bigger clubs — stayed. He was voted the fans' Player of the Year in 1996 and again in 1997, playing the most watchable football in the division below. When a second relegation came in 1998, he left for Ajax with 121 appearances, 22 goals, and a standing in Manchester that two decades of superstars haven't dislodged.
The tees in this drop are cut from that era: the laser-blue Umbro shirt with brother across the chest, the bootleg market prints sold outside the ground, and the nickname the Kippax gave him. Kinky. The King.
