During the late summer of 2020, there was a growing sense of excitement among recruitment staff at Brighton's training base, nestled between the South Downs and the mouth of the English Channel. The scouting structure constructed by Albion owner Tony Bloom is the envy of the world game for good reason: the club signed players like Moisés Caicedo, Alexis Mac Allister, and Marc Cucurella for relatively small sums before selling them at a huge profit. Bloom's data algorithm for finding players is one of the most effective around, and this time, the model had identified a 19-year-old Georgian winger at Rubin Kazan in the Russian Premier League. His name? Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, recently bought by Paris Saint-Germain from Napoli for £65 million and one of the main threats to Liverpool in Tuesday's Champions League last-16 second leg tie at Anfield.
In the end, Brighton did not follow through with their interest in Kvaratskhelia, with Bloom and his team spotting a player in Japan's J-League who played in a similar position to Kvaratskhelia, and whom they knew they could buy for £2.5 million. The acquisition of Kaoru Mitoma from Kawasaki Frontale in August 2021 has not worked out too badly. It is yet another example of how smart Brighton are. When they sign or scout a player, we have all learned to sit up and take notice. That is exactly the effect Kvaratskhelia has been having since he moved to Napoli in summer 2022 from Dinamo Batumi in his homeland, with the Serie A club paying a mere £11 million.
Forming a fabulous partnership with Victor Osimhen, Kvaratskhelia finished the campaign with 12 goals and 13 assists, and Napoli were crowned champions for only the third time in their history. They loved him so much in Naples that they even nicknamed him 'Kvaradona.' When a player is compared to Diego Maradona, a near-deity in Naples and arguably the greatest footballer in history, he must be doing something right.
Even now, in his third season in Europe's top-five leagues, there is something gloriously unrefined about Kvaratskhelia. Where some modern players seem to spend as much time perfecting their hairstyles and finessing their Instagram stories as they do working on their weaker foot, Kvaratskhelia's trim is the sort delivered by a standard town-center barber. With the ball at his feet, he appears to shuffle while somehow also moving at high speed.
While mightily effective, his signature move – cutting in from the left onto his right foot – was worked out over time by Serie A defenses: in his first season, Kvaratskhelia was registering nearly a goal or an assist per 90 minutes; by his final campaign, that had dropped to barely more than one every other game. Perhaps that was partly why no Premier League club seriously rivalled PSG when they did the deal in January, though Mail Sport understands Chelsea had considered it in the past, even weighing up which players to offer Napoli as part-exchange.
With Billy Gilmour now with Napoli and Trevoh Chalobah having interested them in the past, the Italians were open to negotiation – though they are notoriously difficult to deal with. Sporting directors and agents across Europe shudder at the prospect of sitting across a table from Napoli president Aurelio De Laurentiis, a fearsome opponent in transfer talks. Clubs can feel they are on the brink of an agreement, only for circumstances to change repeatedly. Some decide they do not need the hassle and move on to the next target on their list.
With Kvaratskhelia, though, surely it would have been worth the bother. David Webb, the British assistant coach of the Georgian national team, saw Harry Kane at close quarters during a stint at Tottenham from 2015-17 and believes the England captain shares numerous traits with Kvaratskhelia. "The elite players, like Harry Kane, have this edge to them where they have a desire to be the absolute best they can be – and Kvara has that," Webb tells Mail Sport. "You can't get him off the training pitch. He wants to do shooting, finishing, free-kicks, always that extra. I remember speaking to Gareth Southgate about him, and he said: 'I love him. He's a throwback, almost like George
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