Khvicha Kvaratskhelia: PSG's Key Player Aiming for Glory

The World Cup was sold as the summer when every superstar had their moment. The biggest names did deliver. But as the club game returns with the UEFA Super Cup in Salzburg, the stage tilts back towards a man who watched that global showpiece from afar.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is coming for his spotlight again.

The 25-year-old was the outstanding player in last season’s Champions League as Paris Saint-Germain retained their title in May. He will walk out in August hunting a threepeat, intent on reminding everyone that one of Europe’s most devastating footballers was not at the World Cup at all.

PSG’s era of dominance has many faces. Marquinhos has lifted the Champions League trophy twice in their colours. Desire Doue and Vitinha took man-of-the-match honours in Munich and Budapest. Ousmane Dembele claimed the Ballon d'Or after driving that first historic triumph.

But the real shift began when Kvaratskhelia arrived.

Signed from Napoli in January last year, he changed PSG’s rhythm almost overnight. This was a club that had flattered to deceive in Europe, stacked with talent yet somehow incomplete. Something in the mix felt off.

That disappeared as soon as the Georgian hit Paris.

He turned them into a snarling, high-pressing machine. His relentless running and aggression without the ball meshed perfectly with Luis Enrique’s demands and dragged standards up across the forward line. Team-mates ran harder. Pressed higher. Followed his lead.

Aston Villa, PSG’s opponents in this season’s Super Cup, do not need a scouting report to understand the threat. They have the scars. In the first leg of their 2025 quarter-final, it was Kvaratskhelia’s dancing feet that left Axel Disasi twisted and tormented. Over two legs, that tie was arguably PSG’s sternest test on their march to the trophy.

Last season, his influence grew even larger when it mattered most. From the play-off round onwards, no player scored more goals than Kvaratskhelia. Nobody delivered more Champions League assists from open play either. When the competition narrowed, his game expanded.

This is no one-off campaign. It is a body of work.

Before Paris, he had already ripped up a narrative in Naples. He inspired Napoli to a long-awaited league title, smashing the notion that only Diego Maradona could drag the club to that summit. The nickname ‘Kvaradona’ did not appear by accident.

Part of the fascination with Kvaratskhelia is that he does not fit into any neat category. He is an outlier. In style, in story, in the path he took to the top. Many of his PSG team-mates are products of the French football machine, the polished output of academies that churn out elite talent.

England has followed a similar route, reshaping its academy system and riding the financial and competitive power of the Premier League. Youngsters grow inside pristine environments, groomed from childhood for the elite game. The emergence of stars feels almost industrial.

Kvaratskhelia is something else entirely.

Leonid Slutsky, his coach at Rubin Kazan, captured it neatly back in 2023. “Nobody knew about him before he came to Italy and that is understandable,” he said at the time. Then came the line that stuck: “I congratulate Napoli because they won the lottery.”

Slutsky spoke of the winger’s “abnormal thinking” on a pitch, his habit of choosing the option nobody expects. Xisco Munoz, who both played and coached at Dinamo Tbilisi, sees the roots of that in where Kvaratskhelia grew up and learned his game.

“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.”

Those street instincts sit on top of an obsession with the craft. David Webb, who worked with him in the Georgian national-team setup, remembers a player who simply would not leave the pitch. A nightmare to drag off the training ground, he called him. Process-driven. Repetitions for the sake of improvement, not for the cameras. A habit “since day one.”

That is why this summer has felt different for him.

Georgia’s failure to reach the World Cup cut deep at home, but for Kvaratskhelia it doubled as a rare pause. He had dragged his country to Euro 2024. He had gone through the grind of the Club World Cup last year. This was the first extended window in years for his body to breathe.

Rest may lengthen his peak. It might cost him votes.

Ballon d'Or history suggests as much. Kevin Keegan did win the award in a World Cup year without England even qualifying, but that was another era, one in which only European players were eligible and Argentina had just lifted the trophy.

This time, the field is packed. World Cup-winning Spaniards with medals and moments to point to. The relentless scoring feats of Kylian Mbappe and Harry Kane for club and country. Kvaratskhelia stands outside that narrative, his case built on club dominance rather than global tournaments.

The Super Cup offers him a fresh argument.

On a European stage again, against Premier League opposition, he has the chance to reassert himself as the driving force of the continent’s best side. Every slaloming run, every press from the front, every goal or assist in Salzburg will feed that idea.

Right now, his blend of artistry and industry defines this PSG. His individual brilliance does not just decorate their play, it powers it.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, the Champions League’s outstanding player last season and Paris Saint-Germain’s warrior on the wing, steps back into the floodlights with one clear intention: to make this era unmistakably his.