the vote in the second round of the election. Club career Early career Kaladze started his career playing as a striker for his local club Lokomotiv Samtredia, where his father was president, until former Georgia international footballer David Kipiani requested Kakha to join Dinamo Tbilisi. At Dinamo, he played in 82 domestic league games and scored one goal. He made his top-flight debut as a 16-year-old with Dinamo during the 1993–94 campaign. Kaladze claims that a good performance against Italy while playing for Georgia in a match that ended 0–0 brought him to the attention of Dynamo Kyiv; he later said, "In that game I was up against Christian Vieri and I marked him well." A fee equivalent to €280,000 was enough to take him to the Ukrainian Premier League and Dynamo Kyiv in January 1998, where he signed a four-year deal. Here he scored six goals in 71 league games over the two-and-a-half seasons he spent there. The Ukrainian club had been under the ownership of Hryhoriy Surkis and the late Valeriy Lobanovskyi had just been installed as manager; they would go on to win eight consecutive league titles. Kaladze also appeared in both legs of the semi-final of the 1998–99 Champions League against Bayern Munich, which Dynamo Kyiv lost 4–3 on aggregate. En route to the semi-finals, they beat teams like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Arsenal. He won eight league titles in a row during his time at both Dinamo Tbilisi and Dynamo Kyiv. A.C. Milan In January 2001, Kaladze became the most expensive Georgian footballer in history when Milan paid €16 million to bring him to Italy. His decision to join one of the European top teams coincided with witnessing his teammate's near career-ending injury due to poor quality of football pitches in Ukraine at the time. Upon his arrival, Kaladze became a regular starter almost immediately, and played mostly as a left-sided defensive midfielder in 4–4–2 or 4–2–1–3 formations, particularly under caretaker coach Cesare Maldini. In the 2002–03 season, however, he returned to his original role of a defender (left-sided full back and center back), and made 46 appearances in all competitions, including 27 Serie A appearances. That year, Milan won the Champions League, where they beat Juventus on penalties in the final (despite Kaladze missing his penalty) and the Coppa Italia, where they beat Roma 6–3 on aggregate in the final. After Kaladze's double success,