‘Kvaradona’ has Napoli fans daring to dream after summer of discontent

They have stopped worrying about how to pronounce Khvicha Kvaratskhelia’s name in Naples. When the player’s transfer to Napoli was announced in April, one anxious reporter asked Aurelio De Laurentiis for guidance. “I’ll make something up,” replied the club president. “We’ll call him something. He can be ‘Zizì’, that’s not bad.”

A more obvious abbreviation was adopted elsewhere, ‘Kvara’ becoming accepted shorthand among journalists and fans. Two Serie A appearances later, however, a new nickname has taken hold. From the alleys of Naples’s Spanish Quarter to the headlines of national newspapers, the Georgian was being hailed on Monday morning as ‘Kvaradona’.

Perhaps one or two optimists embraced that soubriquet before he arrived, placing their trust in scouting reports that promised an audacious young dribbler. Kvaratskhelia had been hailed by his international teammate Zuriko Davitashvili as the “Georgian Messi”. Stats from his time with Rubin Kazan in Russia showed him taking on his man as regularly as Neymar at Paris Saint-Germain.

Most, though, were hesitant to place a newly-signed 21-year-old in the same breath as Napoli’s greatest player. They wanted to see the evidence with their own eyes. A group of around 1,000 of them got the chance at the Stadio Bentegodi on the season’s opening weekend, travelling to watch their team win 5-2 away to Verona.

Kvaratskhelia scored Napoli’s opening goal, his header drawing them level after they fell behind in the first half. After the interval, he set up Piotr Zielinski for the strike that made it 3-2, releasing his teammate with a first-time through-ball from just inside the opposition half. It was an astonishingly confident pass from a player who looked already like a fully