Khvicha Kvaratskhelia: PSG's Key Player Ready for Super Cup
The World Cup was billed as the summer when every superstar took a turn under the floodlights. Many of them did. Yet as the club game snaps back into focus with the UEFA Super Cup in Salzburg, the stage tilts towards a player who never got near that tournament – Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, and his growing claim to be Europe’s real leading man.
The 25-year-old returns as the reigning Champions League player of the season, the driving force behind Paris Saint-Germain’s successful defence of their crown in May. Now he comes back in August hunting a threepeat, intent on reminding everyone that one of the continent’s most devastating footballers was watching the World Cup from home.
PSG’s era of European dominance has many faces. Marquinhos has twice hoisted the Champions League trophy as captain. Desire Doue and Vitinha collected man-of-the-match awards in the finals in Munich and Budapest. Ousmane Dembele walked away with the Ballon d’Or after that first historic triumph.
But the spark that turned a talented side into a relentless machine arrived from Naples.
The signing that changed everything
When PSG plucked Kvaratskhelia from Napoli in January last year, they did more than add another star name. They fixed a flaw. For all their firepower, PSG had looked strangely flat in Europe. The structure was there, the names were there, yet something in the collective didn’t quite catch light.
Kvaratskhelia changed the temperature immediately.
He turned Luis Enrique’s team into a pressing monster. He chased, harried, tackled, then in the same movement glided past two men with the ball at his feet. His intensity suited the coach, but more importantly, it raised the bar for everyone around him. The forward line started to work like a unit, not a collection of soloists.
Aston Villa, PSG’s opponents in this season’s Super Cup, know exactly what that looks like at close quarters. In the first leg of their 2025 Champions League quarter-final, it was Kvaratskhelia’s quicksilver feet that left Axel Disasi spinning. That tie was arguably PSG’s sternest test in the knockout run. Kvaratskhelia was the difference.
And when the pressure climbed even higher last season, he climbed with it. From the play-off round onwards, no player scored more goals in the Champions League. Nobody laid on more assists from open play either. He didn’t just decorate games; he decided them.
This is becoming a serious body of work.
From ‘Kvaradona’ to Parisian talisman
Long before Paris, there was Naples. Before the Parc des Princes, the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona. Before Champions League titles, a Serie A crown that many in the city believed only one man in history could deliver.
Kvaratskhelia helped shatter that myth. He inspired Napoli to the Scudetto, ending their long, aching wait for a title and earning the nickname ‘Kvaradona’ in the process. It was not just about numbers. It was about the way he played: fearless, improvisational, occasionally wild, always dangerous.
Part of the fascination with the Georgian is that he does not fit any production line. He is not the product of a polished academy system in France or England, where elite structures and Premier League money have created conveyor belts of talent. His route is more jagged, more improvised.
Leonid Slutsky, who coached him at Rubin Kazan, once tried to explain it. “Nobody knew about him before he came to Italy and that is understandable,” he said back in 2023. Then came the line that stuck: “I congratulate Napoli because they won the lottery.”
Slutsky spoke of Kvaratskhelia’s “abnormal thinking” on a football pitch, his instinct to choose an option nobody else sees. Xisco Munoz, who played and coached at Dinamo Tbilisi, linked that mindset to where he comes from.
“In Spain, we stop and pass, maybe learning on a training ground or at school,” Xisco told Sky Sports. “In Georgia, it is street talent. In Georgia, they play their football on the street. They have to fight and have the contact. It is difficult to teach this in school.”
The rawness of the street is only half the story. David Webb, who worked with him at international level, remembers a player who simply refused to leave the training pitch. Process-obsessed, repetition-driven, he kept working long after sessions ended. The tricks and feints are not showboating; they are habits drilled in “since day one.”
Street footballer. Training-ground addict. It is an unusual mix, and it shows.
A missing World Cup, a fresh Kvaratskhelia
Georgia’s failure to reach the World Cup this summer cut Kvaratskhelia out of the global conversation at the very moment the sport’s biggest stage opened up. For a player with Ballon d’Or ambitions, that hurts.
But his body may thank him.
He dragged his country to Euro 2024. He then went straight into a Club World Cup campaign with PSG last year. This off-season was his first real chance to breathe in years, to rest legs that have carried club and country almost non-stop.
The trade-off is obvious. Voters often lean towards World Cup winners or those who shine brightest on that stage. Kevin Keegan did manage to claim the Ballon d’Or in a World Cup year when England did not qualify, but that was a different era, restricted to European players and with Argentina crowned champions.
This time, the field is loaded. World Cup-winning Spaniards. The staggering scoring feats of Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane for club and country. The numbers will be loud, the narratives louder.
Kvaratskhelia will have to punch through all of that from the club stage alone.
The Super Cup in Salzburg offers a perfect starting punch. A one-off final, eyes fixed on the European champions, against a dangerous Aston Villa side who already know how hard he is to stop. It is an opportunity not just to lift another trophy, but to reassert his name in the individual awards debate before the season truly bites.
PSG remain the benchmark in Europe. Their squad is stacked, their trophy cabinet swelling, their aura restored. At the heart of it all, the same figure keeps emerging with the ball at his feet and defenders backpedalling.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, the outstanding performer in last season’s Champions League and the warrior winger of Paris Saint-Germain, has had his rest.
Now he looks ready to take the stage back.
