The bright lights of San Siro will illuminate the top two teams tomorrow night in AC Milan and Napoli, with two young stars looking to stand up and be counter.
La Gazzetta dello Sport writes how there will be no Rafael Leao or Victor Osimhen present, so the two players who are looking to be protagonists in their place are Charles De Ketelaere and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia.
There are some similarities linking the two. For a start, the Belgian and the Georgian were both born in 2001, and they both considered the move to Serie A to be a step up compared to where they were playing before (Belgium and Georgia respectively).
Both are considered to be investments by their clubs as Milan spent around €35m to sign De Ketelaere from Club Brugge, while Kvaratskhelia cost €10-12m from Dinamo Batumi (via Wikipedia).
Khvicha has undoubtedly made a bigger impact in terms of numbers as he already has four goals and two assists in his eight games in 2022-23, while Charles has one assist but he has not started every game and he is still adapting to Pioli’s complex system.
With Kvaratskhelia there is undoubtedly a more direct approach to his play as his dribbling and shooting have caused almost every team a problem so far, with De Ketelaere instead focusing more on orchestrating attacks with his passing and clever movement.
In the absence of two big players like Leao and Osimhen, the eyes of Italy and the world will be on CDK and KK to see if they can produce and be decisive in a huge fixture.
