A second before he scored the most legendary goal in football history, Diego Maradona met Terry Fenwick. He had just eliminated Reid, Beardsley and Butcher when the last England centre-back came towards him and placed himself between the ball and the penalty area. “I should have shot him…” Fenwick confessed years later. He punched him. It was like hitting the air. “I was coming at a hundred an hour,” Maradona explained. “They didn’t even throw me with a truck.”
Few times has a footballer better described the trance state that is at its most virtuous at certain moments. It happened to Zidane on Twelfth Night in 2002 against Deportivo; It happened to Ronaldo Nazario on October 12, 1996 in Compostela; and it happened to Jvicha Kvaratskhelia on February 21 in Frankfurt.
The Georgia winger took the ball down the left wing and leaned on Zielinski to shoot the diagonal. When Kamada tried to intercept the return, instead of using his body to protect possession, he faked the ball and let the ball run. As if he had a sensor built into his head that measures the speed of the opponent and the ball, Kvaratskhelia realized that Kamada would be late. blow. The Japanese sailed past, missing a foot off the ball and left confused as the attacker sprinted towards the double row of defenders blocking his path. Without stopping the run, he combined with Anguissa and crossed the rivals’ block towards the Concord area to get the wall. So he was already possessed. Anguissa handed him a melon back on the wrong foot. To his back. Impossible to master under normal conditions. If Maradona scored goal of the century in 1986, what Kvaratskhelia scored in Germany was control of the year. In an unnatural shortening, he spun on his own axis, hovered in the air in the middle of the penalty area, muffled the ball with his right foot and dodged the fence of Götze, Max and Ndicka within a tenth, assisting Di Lorenzo with a hoe that repelling this allowed him the calmest shot imaginable: The 0:2 was final.
They call him Kvaradona. Whether he will tie Maradona’s boots is questionable. But he inherits a piece of fantasy that fans of the most vibrant club in the Mediterranean have dedicated to their pagan god, the most fascinating player who ever lived. After 32 years of waiting, Napoli fans are witnessing the appearance of another prophet. The coach of the unstoppable Serie A leaders, Luciano Spalletti, is not inhibited. “From the standpoint of individual one-on-one quality,” he explains, “from the technical quality in close quarters… the god of football was the god of football, but Kvara are on the right track.”
Manchester United top the handful of clubs that have made offers for the 22-year-old forward. They all exceed 100 million euros. Napoli president Aurelio de Laurentiis says if there’s one footballer he doesn’t want to sell, it’s this boy with a sparse beard, pale and hunchbacked, who signed for €11m from Dinamo Batumi in the summer of 2022. The most dizzying upgrade to remember.
Several of the analysts consulted by this newspaper, who report to the premier clubs, point out that Kvaratskhelia has no sidereal change of pace. They add that he needs to improve his inner game and breaking clearance. If it’s worth what the market dictates, they say, that’s mainly because it combines two exceptional virtues. He is able to handle the ball without losing sight of his markers’ feet and waiting for them to misstep. and his control of the run in the last third of the field makes him one of the most gifted pure wingers in history for touching and continuing through dizzying walls. “Among the extremes with a designation of origin, only Chris Waddle and Frank Ribéry have matched him in recent decades,” observes a technician on the service of a Premier League great, who prefers to remain anonymous.
Running control in a confined space is the technical masterpiece that distinguishes children from adults in attacking football. In the scene of crucial yards, the vast majority of players will pause their run to tame the ball being passed to them before starting again. Kvaratskhelia is able to get a wall in a thrown race and steer millimeters with a touch, without losing an iota of acceleration. His sense of coordination is tied to his other ability, the ability to trap defenders. As Spalletti says, “It’s unpredictable because it can come out left or right; When Jvicha looks at you, he knows how to make you turn your back on him. And then you’re dead. It makes you dizzy!”
Garrincha, Figo and Joaquin Sanchez
It’s the ability that Garrincha or Figo increased. The same power that allowed Joaquín Sánchez to extend his career to 41 years. You don’t have to use a lot of force. It’s enough for Kvaratskhelia to move toward defenders, alternately driving the inside and outside of his foot, waist-cinching to feint, and stomping hard to fake snatches until his opponents twist their trunks in the desired direction. When he sees his markers’ feet stepping on the wrong-angled sticks, he attacks their backs without the need for major changes in tempo. His superior ability to align defenders to his liking allows him to buy so much time and get out of the first overflow so well that later, when another marker shows up, he’ll find it easier to close it again with the foot-reading ritual dismast .
The greatest possessed this ability. Diego Maradona, the first. A select few wingers have also perfected it. Jvicha Kvaratskhelia is the new exponent of a strange art. If his cold Caucasian character is tempered by the heat of southern passion, he could become a phenomenon of the time. Today he lives obsessed with the football god.
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