Kvara is just the latest in a long series. Many have left the blue shirt… from Altafini to Juliano, from Lavezzi to Cavani, up to Careca, Ferrara, Koulibaly and, above all, Higuain, greeted with the number 71… Maradona and Mertens are chapters apart
Leaving Naples is always a complicated matter. In the violent wave of memories that attack anyone with their back to the gulf – ordinary people, champions of proven fame – the ineluctable reasons for farewell and the fear of regret fight. Fatal is the tangle of feelings that stir in that uneasy territory where those who remain – it’s fate – reproaches those who leave for something. Kvaratskhelia’s heartfelt farewell to Naples is currently making the rounds online, a true film shot on the cusp of emotion – keep your Kleenex handy – with an emphasis that always appears sincere, but sometimes redundant. Kvara leaves “taking love away” and “retracing the path we lived together”, walking in slow motion on the Maradona lawn in the rain, hugging his partner; he takes his few-month-old son to contemplate his locker, he himself goes – with a very cunning move – to pay homage to Diego’s mural in the Spanish Quarter, finally he alludes to an unspoken truth, an epiphany not yet revealed: “One day I will tell …” And in short, he cloaks his move to Paris in a “Lord of the Rings” epic.