Khvicha Kvaratskhelia: Scout reveals how Arsenal missed out on PSG star | OneFootball

A former Arsenal scout has revealed the Gunners passed up on the opportunity to sign Paris Saint-Germain star Khvicha Kvaratskhelia earlier in his career.

Kvaratskhelia, a £70m signing from Napoli in January, played a dazzling role in PSG's Champions League semi-final triumph over Arsenal, having tasted Serie A glory with the Partenopei in 2022/23 in his first season at the club.

His career could have looked so different, however. Former Arsenal scout Tomasz Pasieczny admitted to following Kvaratskhelia during the early stages of his career, with Rubin Kazan and Dinamo Batumi, only for one particularly underwhelming performance to leave him wary of recommending the winger.

"I was at the old stadium in Kazan for a match with Dynamo Moscow, where Sebastian Szymanski was playing at the time, Pasieczny told Weszlo. "Khvicha came off the bench, made two completely unsuccessful dribbles and the fans reacted very negatively. At that stage he couldn't cope with it.

"Every next move was bad, from start to finish. He got lost, the ball bounced off him, you could see that he had lost his confidence. It was exaggerated. I started to pay more attention to it. He overcame it, but if it had continued, it would have been a crazy problem.

Kvaratskhelia shone against Arsenal / Xavier Laine/GettyImages

"In the case of big clubs and longer observations, you see a player often and you don't make a decision based on one report. You follow his development because you know that something may come of it, but it's not like someone goes straight from Kazan to a top team. Everyone knew he would be mega good, but they wondered how good. Whether he would be the absolute top or a bit lower. Few had any doubts that he wouldn't be at all.

"However, at that stage I had to write how it is, draw conclusions, write where the problems are."

Kvaratskhelia left Russia in March 2022 to join Batumi in his native Georgia, but he was on the move just months later as Napoli took the risk and paid a fee of around £10m to sign the winger that summer.

He won Serie A's MVP award in his first season in Naples and has gone from strength to strength ever since, forming a key part of a PSG attacking line which is vying to lift the Champions League trophy later this month.

Arsenal, meanwhile, snapped up Brazilian winger Marquinhos in the summer of 2022, before splashing out on Leandro Trossard midway through the following campaign.