Non-stop action. Great goals. Controversies galore. Sensational passes. Unreal drama. European football rarely lacks for talking points after any given weekend of football, but with so much happening it can often be hard to focus on the biggest moments.
ESPN India attempts to single out one moment from all the action across Europe's top 5 leagues (league action only) that lit up the weekend.
This weekend, despite plenty of deserving candidates, we pick Khvicha Kvaratskhelia's strike in Napoli's 2-0 win against Atalanta, which extended their lead at the top of the Serie A table to 18 points.
Mayhem. Chaos. Magnificence.
In modern football, those three words are rarely used together. Take the first two, and most believe, the third is the last thing that goes with it.
Across Europe's big leagues, magnificence comes as a natural byproduct of order and discipline: whether in the technical ability to retain possession or the learned capacity to identify pressing triggers and go for it. Even the most helter-skelter-looking games seem to have an innate order to things. Intuition buried, restraint instilled. After all, that's what makes teams tick, what gets you goals and what wins you games.
Nobody seems to have told any of this to Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. Look at everything about him: Socks low, hovering somewhere just above the ankles. Jersey hanging loosely on his frame, like he's off to meet his pals in a retro 90s number. A running style so languid it makes him look downright lazy. A need to take several, small touches where one should have been more than enough. An unreasonable hatred to making the simple, obvious pass (or move). A desire to make you, the spectator, go 'Whoa! What in the...! What has he just done?' every time he gets the ball.
Mayhem. Chaos.
Now, look at what it almost always results in... pure, undiluted, magnificence. They love him so much in the city of Naples, they've bestowed upon him the biggest honour they possibly could: they call him Kvaradona.
On Saturday, he showed the world (yet again), just why.
It started with Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa bullying the usually un-bully-able Duvan Zapata just inside the Napoli half. Zapata's intensity then carried him into the block-cum-interception off Ederson that robbed Atalanta off possession.
The ball zipped along forward to Victor Osimhem who held off Merih Demiral with absurd ease, turned him inside out (while continuing to run forward) and then passed it to his left. To Kvaratskhelia.
When he received it, he was just outside the Atalanta box. Three cute little touches later, he was on the line, the edge of the box, moving to his right. His next touch was accompanied by a lavish drop of the left shoulder, a move that sent Rafael Toloi, Demiral, and Giorgio Scalvini scampering to put out a fire that was never lit.
Hit pause on the frame at this moment and it's a masterpiece in chaos: Kvaratskhelia leaning to his left, the ball tied to his laces, the three defenders in various stages of descent as they try to get a block in, three others in the away wite of Atalanta looking on, too far away to affect the outcome.
Kvaratskhelia's next touch was to take the ball to his right again, a move done in an inexplicable combination of speed and slow motion, like Neo in the Matrix. One more touch (because more touches just seem to make him happy), and it was out of his feet. Pause again, now.
The three defenders in front of him are completely floundering. The goalkeeper has no idea what's coming. The three chasing have become four, and are rapidly closing in. Two of them are within touching distance.
Unpause.
Whack! The ball thundered into the roof of the Atalanta net. The primal roar of the Diego Armando Maradona stadium followed a split second later. An hour gone, 1-0 Napoli.
𝙒𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙖 𝙜𝙤𝙖𝙡, 𝙆𝙫𝙖𝙧𝙖 🔥🇬🇪 #NapoliAtalanta pic.twitter.com/RlPQeO0Q62
- Lega Serie A (@SerieA_EN) March 12, 2023
Amir Rrahmani would make it two a few minutes later, off an Eljif Elmas corner, but it had all been done and dusted the moment Kvaratskhelia ripped through that Atalanta defence. It was one of those moves -- one of those goals -- that screamed: 'know your place. This ain't it.'
Ten million they had signed him for, from Dinamo Batumi in his native Georgia, where he had been playing after leaving Russian club Rubin Kazan on a free contract (voided after Russia invaded Ukraine). Nobody in Europe had considered him, but in the end, Napoli and Luciano Spalletti had.
It's now 11 goals and nine assists in the league for him. He is now the symbol of resistance. Napoli haven't won the Serie A in more than three decades, but as of matchday 26, they lead Serie A by a whopping 18 points -- no one else has been in the same pin code in the standings or on the pitches.
And they're doing it in his way, the Kvaratskhelia way that also just so happens to be the Neapolitan way: all chaos, mayhem, fun and magnificence.