A suitable replacement really depends on the way the original worked, is it analog signal, rotary encoding, pwm, or something else?I guess that without all the additional hardware is a different game. I can only think that someone talented enough, could make it so that depending how fast and how many times you hit the kick button in 1 sec will define the power, like in the sport games, but I'm not sure if the game is prepared for such a delay counting clicks. For sure it's not an easy hack.
I'm reminded of that Namco System 1 game BravoMan that has the 2 position buttons so one switch would trigger at the top of the button range and the second switch would trigger at the bottom of the range, and the result is that the game could time how long between the switches getting triggered and determine how fast the button was pushed. https://www.arcade-projects.com/threads/namco-sys1-beraboh-man-bravoman-custom-i-o-board.20750/