How does he compare to Sancho in this respect?
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia | Napoli Player
- Thread starter Ekeke
- Start date
The Ribery to Sancho's David Silva
True - you could argue our best front three would be Garnacho-Rashford-Greenwood despite spending around a quarter of a billion on Martial, Antony, Sancho, Amad & Pellistri.
greenwood was around we wouldn't have bought one of either Sancho or Antony
I've never seen Sancho exemplify having that world class close control. At Dortmund he was a hybrid creative winger from the games I saw and some highlights. Doing 1-2s and play making. He's a system player but I don't he has the mentality or the drive to play the wide areas in the premier league. He should be trialled if you will at the no 10 role and rotate with Bruno.
they are doing the promo right now about Khvicha
Doesn't have the acceleration and nimbleness/dexterity in tight spaces of Ribery, however, he has a much better technique of hitting the ball than Ribery.
If his game this season becomes a constant across his career, he'll hit much better goal ratio than Ribery.
The rest of Kvaratskhelia qualities very much match the Frenchman.
I also want Bayern to splurge on this guy if it's possible, a perfect match for Bayern's way of playing.
If his game this season becomes a constant across his career, he'll hit much better goal ratio than Ribery.
The rest of Kvaratskhelia qualities very much match the Frenchman.
I also want Bayern to splurge on this guy if it's possible, a perfect match for Bayern's way of playing.
What are Napoli's finances like?
Obviously they will receive a big boost this season by winning the league and going deep into the CL.
Obviously they will receive a big boost this season by winning the league and going deep into the CL.
guys favorite number is 7.....we have the 7 open and that number carries stardust at United
Sancho was bought before the Greenwood situation kicked off (and we were after him 12 months previous).
I would suggest Antony would have also been bought regardless and Greenwood would be in the team at CF (we likely wouldn't have loaned Weghurst though).
Hes probably right, along with Rashford, Haaland and a fair few others he is certainly an exciting player.
But no where near the standard of Messi, Maradona et al or even a balon dor contender as several on here have alluded to.
Are people really saying this? I don't believe you
I see this the other way around. Similar pace and even more dexterity than Ribery in tight spaces/one on ones, but i'm not convinced yet he's going to be the sort of wide player that regularly scores in double-figures each season (in the league alone).
It obviously also remains to be seen if he can replicate a similar form over more than one season, but as said earlier, that is likely to be more of a mentality/durability issue rather than technical one.
Perhaps you don't remember Ribery very well but at his peak very could reach his level on tight spaces, he got Leo fecking Messi on his arse afterall. Kvara has a higher center of gravity, makes him less nimble/agile.
He's better than Ribery. At age 22, certainly.
That's obvious
Garnacho in 3 years is going to have one hell of a youtube montage.
Kvaratskhelia looks a tidy player but the last thing United need is another left sided attacker.
Kvaratskhelia looks a tidy player but the last thing United need is another left sided attacker.
Perhaps i do? I don't think there's a substantial gap between them and we still need to see more of Kvara to fully compare imo , as Ribery had an extensively succesful career at the top level, but height/centre of gravity isn't always everything for ability in tight spaces/ dribbling and Kvara is uncommonly agile and quick footed for his size. Savicevic was about the same build as Kvara, and he's another obvious quick example of someone that was was a more agile dribbler/better in tight spaces than Ribery.
He isn’t a tidy player. Tidy player is your likes of Antony. Kvaratskhelia is opposite of that.Just want to go on record to say how good I think this lad actually is. If he was to go to City and be supplying Haaland then I think the rest of the league may as well give up and go home.
Yes, it would be an issue if he went to City but i'm not too concerned by that b/c if he leaves Napoli if won't be for another two years at least as they won't sell both Osimhen and Khvicha in the same summer
He is what City hoped for Grealish to be.
He'll win a Ballon D'Or
Woah!
Let’s get rid of some players and get this fellow then! I want Sancho to come good and all but if a talent like that (Balon Dor level like you say) is playing for Napoli (a club you can get players for tbh) then you just have to go for him.
edit : probably too expensive sadly given we have many other holes to fill
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I think he'll spend another season or two (max) at Napoli.
Napoli will surely sell Osimhen for a record fee and then build the team around Kvara in the short term, before selling him off for another record fee.
I really hope they don't do this though as it would be really nice to have another team be perennial contenders in the Serie A. But I expect Real, City or PSG will come calling.
We are pretty well stocked in this area, both Martinelli and Saka are brilliant and ESR showed last season (double digit scorer in the EPL) that he is also a quality LW option. They are all 22 and younger too.
Watching clips of him I notice that he’s so good at using a dummy to fool defenders. It’s something I always wonder - why can’t all technically gifted attackers pull off a good dummy? It hardly seems a very demanding skill. Alright someone like Messi is so obscenely talented that he just uses body feints and close control so he doesn’t need it. But I remember even someone like Gerrard who wasn’t particularly a great dribbler used to be quite efficient with a dummy. Then you have players like Sancho and Antony who Ive barely ever see doing it ? Sancho did it twice once to VVD/ Milner and then this past weekend I think. Both were so effective.
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I'd go so far to say a dummy or body feint is one of the most used tricks in the book.
Sancho has used it repeatedly in the past.
What generally tends to happen is defenders work it out sooner rather than later and so it becomes less effective the more it's used.
But defenders really shouldn't be getting beat easily by this trick, they should be standing up with eyes on the ball.
You're in for a big shock if/when your board go there!
If you think Levy is stubborn/infuriating to deal with you've seen nothing yet. De Laurentiis the reason they never lost Koulibaly in his pomp.
Kvaratskhelia is going to be impossible for anyone for the foreseeable future. Napoli will be defending Serie A winners, possibly UCL winners with the money both of them bring alongside a potential windfall for the sale of Osimhen (which alone will be a drag and only happening if it does because he's got two years left), they don't just hold all the cards they have them in a vault.
Good luck to anyone going for this guy this summer, would take a combination of Kvaratskhelia aggressively forcing it and an opening offer in the Neymar/Mbappe ballpark to even get their president talking.
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I agree. And it's a good thing, for United at least. We're not at the stage where we could or should go for this guy, with too much else to do. And we really don't want him to go anywhere else in the meantime. In a couple of years we could credibly compete for him, especially if our revival continues and new owners have provided financial power and competence.
Same was said about De Bruyne and Haaland and then Arsenal said no.
He’s one of those strange examples where he produces more that his talent suggests he should. He has a lot of very ‘basic’ tricks up his sleeves, and often scores goals where the ball goes through players or the keeper and you’re left thinking he got lucky (similar to Solskjaer). Ability wise I’d have him below the likes of Mahrez, Nani, and Ribery, but somehow he’s more effective.
A brilliant player in the making but considering we have GArnacho, SAncho and Rashford not to mention others can play in the same position, certainly not someone on our radar.
Still plays in an agressively mediocre league. Has a lot to prove. Great talent though, mind.
His swerves work for a number of reasons:
- he can go either way, which means him standing a defender up already has them in his spell because he uses their discombobulated state to determine which side he'll actually break out on. Only players with great feet, balance or both can genuinely go both ways as opposed to trying to find the opportune moment to use their favoured foot, which is where a canny defender can ignore some of the swerves knowing the illusion is more about getting the ball onto their favoured side/foot.
- he's aggressive, which means defenders have to be equally committed to every swerve because if they are not, he's already beaten them. His conviction deviates from the norm because few players can burst through at any given moment to make those dummies so sellable and believable.
- fear. Simple as that. His reputation as a dribbler precedes him, which has defenders on hot coals the moment the engagement begins. The fear connects all previous points together because the mental load he puts on them is way above the norm - if every commitment you make is potentially the wrong action, it leads to the comical brain freezes that make it look like the matrix. Most defenders lag when faced with exceptional dribblers, or, they overcommit in panic, both being the wrong answer, but not something they can help doing.
- there's also the issue of how you win the ball against someone like him. He is strong, he has very good acceleration and his turn sleights are absurd, which means if you don't hit his central mass, he'll literally power past you regardless. Defenders can either attempt to go for the ball itself or attempt to take out the man; most times skilful dribblers are knocked off the ball by touch tight defenders rather than tackled - to nail kvaratskhelia with enough bodily force to stop him, you've got to line up well enough to knock him out of his stride. He doesn't give defenders the chance to try that very often, and has a penchant for rolling them with 360's or various degrees of spins when they do. This means they are scared to get close enough for that kind of engagement, which again leads to comedic standing off or confused, momentary pauses that seem to simply let him by.
None of this is unique to the player, just dribbling 101 beyond a certain level, just we don't see it engendered often because dribblers of that calibre are rare. Figo might be a good comparison for the height, build and the way he'd slalom without challenges seeming to come his way as often as they supposedly should plus the fact he too could and did go either way as the scenario determined.
Kvaratskhelia is a better player than OGS, and has nothing to envy from Mahrez, he is much better than Mahrez was at the same age.
Napoli have got to be the oddestly brilliant team on the planet. Some undeniably world class players have spent the best years of their career there. Maradona of course. Cavani and Koulibali recently.
Some players just absorb the insanity and fervour of that fan base and roll with it.
If I was Kvara or Osimhen I’d absolutely stay. Naples is incredible. I’ve only spent 6 weeks there across two different times, but I’d have given everything to have stayed. It’s a really unique City. Broken and weird but undeniably beautiful and appealing. It’s what Liverpool thinks it is. The only comparable for me would be Marseille.
Naples as a City and Napoli as a club are wedded to each other. The club identity is embedded in the City and the City’s identity is inextricably linked to the club.
I’d be over the moon if both players stayed for another two years and they won another couple of Scudetto and a Champions League.
Having said that… they may win the CL this year to complete a double, and without that end target, I suspect one of them will be sold.
He sells the dummy like Giggs used to. It’s a whole body dummy. He reminds me of George Best (just as Giggs did).
To be fair, going to somewhere for 6 weeks is not the same as living there. You were also not a housebound superstar when you spent time there, I'd imagine.
I mean… they have 3 out of 8 CL QF spots. That’s divorced from ‘aggressively mediocre’.
The league has evolved in the past 5-10 years. Take a look at the latest Italy squad and see how average it is. The average Serie A team used to have 50% Italians in it, with the best 4-6 teams hoarding all the best ones. It’s now nothing like that.
Serie A is once again a great league and he’s killing it every week.
But he isn't better than Mahrez at his peak.