Stephen El Shaarawy or Khvicha Kvaratskhelia? Who is a better Player?
This is not the first time that we are witnessing such a debate where a large age gap can be seen and there is a big difference in experience as well. Two absolute heroes of Italian football who are a constant fan favourite as they try to continue dominating in their area.
Stephan El Shaarawy is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a left Winger for the Serie A club Roma and the Italian national team. He started his youth career with Genoa when he was 14 years old and was given a chance to make his debut against Chievo. He is also the 8th youngest player in the history of Serie A to have made a debut in the top division. In 2010 he was loaned to Padova and proved this word for the team as he quickly started performing and was also awarded as the 2011 Serie B footballer of the Year.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is a Georgian professional footballer who plays as a left Winger for the club Napoli and the Georgian National Team. He started performing from the very start of his career as in the early days of his career he won 2 consecutive Russian Premier League Best Young Player Awards for his exceptionally good performance. He was signed to Napoli when he was just 22 years old and he turned out to be one of the most valuable players and contributed to a huge win in the UEFA Champions League and the first Serie A title after 33 years.
1: Club Career
Shaarawy signed for the Serie A club Milan at a fee of 20 million euros. His career at Milan started on a low note as he made only 7 appearances in the first 6 months. After that, he was given deserving chances and he proved himself and turned out to be one of the most important assets and also one of the young highly rated players as well.
After scoring crucial goals in the next matches and becoming an important part of the team in the UEFA Champions League, he also won the league’s Best Young Revelation and emerged as a promising youngster in Serie A.
Kvaratskhelia was announced as the latest signing of the Serie A giants Napoli at a reported fee of 12 million euros and made his debut against Hellas Verona where he did not fail to impress the fans and the management by his performance where he provided a crucial assist in a tyrannizing 5-2 win.
Continued performance and domination earned him a spot in the league’s top scorer’s list as he became the only player from Napoli to score 3 goals in the first two matches. His first Champions League came against Ajax and consistently performed to get the Man of the Match award as well.
Let’s take a look at the stats of both players in their prime to date to find who leads.
| Kvaratskhelia | El Shaarawy | |
| Games | 34 | 37 |
| Goals | 12 | 16 |
| Assists | 13 | 5 |
After taking a look at the given stats we can clearly say that Kvaratskhelia is a slightly better player as he has more contributions even though he played fewer matches than Shaarawy. But we must appreciate Shaarawy for his exceptional performance in the previous season where he played a total of 37 matches, scored 16 goals, and provided 5 assists. The young Kvaratskhelia is ahead of Shaarawy in this category.
2: Titles
Winning titles with the team and contributing at the level best to become the winners is one of the main characteristics of an excellent player. Talking about this segment we will be taking a closer look at the total number of team titles won by both the players to find out who is a better team player and who has been performing more dedicatedly as a team.
Kvaratskhelia’s Titles:
Russian Cup
Serie A
El Shaarawy’s Titles
Campionato Nazionale Primavera
Copa Italia Primavera
Supercoppa Primavera
Chinese FA Cup
UEFA Europa League Runner Up
UEFA Europa Conference League
Kvaratskhelia has won only two titles till now while Shaarawy has won 6 titles till date. However, these titles cannot decide Kvaratskhelia’s future as he is just 22 years old and has a very big career still left to win a lot more titles. Just because this is a comparison we have to declare one winner of this category and that is El Shaarawy as he has more titles and has been playing for a long time.
3: Individual Honors
To know more about a player and better understand the hunger for winning for himself in his career we must take a look at the individual honors the players have earned. All the players in the football industry who are grinding hard not only focus on winning and getting the best results for the team but also work hard to establish themselves as one of the finest in the industry. So we will be taking a look at the individual honours of both players.
Kvaratskhelia’s Individual Honors:
2x Russian Premier League young player of the season
Russian Premier League left Winger of the Season
3x Georgian Footballer of the Year
UEFA Champions League Young Player of the Season
3x Serie A Player of the Month
Serie A Goal of the Month
Serie A most valuable player
Serie A team of the season
Serie A top assist provider
Serie A goal of the season
Ballon d’Or Nominee 2023
El Shaarawy’s Individual Honors:
UEFA European Under 17 Championship team of the tournament
Serie B Footballer of the Year
Gran Galà del Calcio AIC Serie A Best Young Revelation
Pallone d’Argento
Kvaratskhelia is a clear winner of this category as the starting of a senior career has been a prolific start and he has been ranked among the best players of this age group.
Reaching this level at just 22 years is something exceptional and this is how he has beaten El Shaarawy in this category and has won more individual honours than him.
4: International Career
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia made his debut for the Georgian national team in 2019 where he earned a spot in the starting Squad for the Euro 2020 qualifiers. His immense dedication and outstanding performance made a clear path for his entry into the national team. He was already scouted and after watching his impressive game play he became an obvious first choice for the selectors and the manager.
Kvaratskhelia scored his first international goal in the UEFA Nations League against North Macedonia. Also, he scored against Spain in 2021 and 3 days later against Greece. The same year he scored a crucial brace that helped Georgia win over Sweden. After performing exceptionally well in the first phase of the 2022 Nations League he topped the list of players in nominations and overall ranking as well.
El Shaarawy first qualified to play for the Egyptian national football team but was later on denied by the coach of the national team. As his father possessed Italian nationality he was called up to play with the under-17 Italian National team and took part in the 2000 and UEFA under 17 Euro and 2009 FIFA under-17 World Cup as well. He made his debut for the Italian under-21 team in the qualifiers against Hungary.
Finally after a lot of struggle and proving his worth on various stages the young man got a chance to prove himself in the senior team in 2012. He also represented the country at the 2013 FIFA Confederation Cup but he was not included in the 2014 FIFA World Cup unfortunately due to an injury. He finally ended his three-year goal drought after scoring a goal against Azerbaijan in a UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying match.
| Kvaratskhelia | El Shaarawy | |
| Games | 26 | 30 |
| Goals | 12 | 6 |
| Assists | 7 | 4 |
El Shaarawy has played more matches than Kvaratskhelia but still, he has not scored more goals and assists than him. The young player Kvaratskhelia has achieved and maintained enough stats to prove himself superior to El Shaarawy in this category.
5: Personal Life
El Shaarawy has a strong bond with his family and he loves spending time and celebrating his milestones with his family. He is a happily married man and tied the knot with his beloved wife Ester Giordano. His net worth is around $10 million. He signed a sponsorship with American sportswear brand Nike and also appeared in an advertisement in 2012. He was also seen on the Italian cover of FIFA 14 alongside Lionel Messi.
Khvicha Kvaratskhelia is the son of footballer Badri Kvaratskhelia and also has two younger brothers who also play football. Belonging from Georgian descent this young player has been working hard from the very start of his career to reach the heights and is currently completely focused on building and establishing himself as a big name in the industry. This could be possibly a reason that he is not engaged with anyone and is currently single. His net worth is $5 million and has made a good status at a very young age.
Stephen El Shaarawy vs Khvicha Kvaratskhelia? Who is a better Player?
We have completely analyzed both players under various categories and we have seen their performance and complete statistics of their prime form. This information is enough to conclude that Kvaratskhelia is a slightly better player than El Shaarawy. He is young but still, he has managed to maintain better international stats, more individual honours, set up a good net worth at a very young age, and most importantly he also gave a neck-to-neck competition to El Shaarawy in the Club Stats category as well. After this comparison, he has turned out to be the ultimate winner of this debate and he has also proved that his age is definitely not a barrier for him to reach the heights of success.
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