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The man who completed football had everything except a starting berth for the biggest club games. Julian Alvarez’s medal collection includes the World Cup and the Copa America, the Champions League and the Copa Libertadores, the Club World Cup and the European Super Cup, the Premier League and the Argentine Primera League, some of them more than once.
He has been at Manchester City for two seasons and won more silverware than the club earned in the first 85 years of their history.
So perhaps the £82m fee City will receive from Atletico Madrid includes a premium for the guarantee of silverware that seemingly accompanies him to Spain. Certainly it represents a remarkable piece of business, and negotiating, by City: signed for a bargain £14m from River Plate – a price that looked still better when, a year later, Chelsea paid £107m for Enzo Fernandez, another of that River team, but who went to Stamford Bridge via Benfica – they will sell him for a club-record amount.
They can note that Erling Haaland’s deputy will go for a sum that is around £30m more than the Norwegian cost. At a point when many a club on mainland Europe appears cash-strapped, they are squeezing one of the 20 biggest fees ever from Atletico.
And that for a player who seemed to have the bittersweet billing of the best second-choice striker in the game. Not, admittedly, for much of last season when Pep Guardiola seemed to think a match lacked official status if Alvarez did not start it in some position, but Alvarez did not begin the FA Cup final, nor either leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid, or the visit of Arsenal, or the game at Tottenham where the title was all but won, or the match against West Ham when it actually was.
His season still brought 54 appearances, 19 goals and 13 assists. Alvarez was invaluable in the two months when Haaland was injured, useful during Kevin de Bruyne’s five months on the sidelines.
It could render him difficult to replace: the job description could change from starter to substitute, from No 9 to No 10 to even No 8. Alvarez showed a resourcefulness, a willingness to turn his hand to anything and everything: in De Bruyne’s absence, he – perhaps surprisingly – emerged as City’s set-piece specialist.
And he was the most durable of footballers. In the two years since his City debut, he has made 130 appearances, 103 for his club, 27 for Argentina, with the kind of work ethic that should endear him to Diego Simeone. Indeed, Argentina’s World Cup-winning strike force did the running of two men: the difference being that Alvarez did all of it to allow Lionel Messi to stand still.
And yet his departure comes with a question perhaps still unanswered: how good is Alvarez?
He was definitely City’s jack of all trades. At Atletico, he will have to be master of one: the Metropolitano – and the Vicente Calderon before it – has felt the spiritual home of the No 9 during a time when many another ground has been graced by false nines. Simeone has liked the genuine article, especially if they have had a forcefulness and a physicality.
Diego Costa, Luis Suarez, Alvaro Morata and Mario Mandzukic have all scored goals in copious quantities for Simeone’s Atletico, even if their task for the man who leads the line has often been providing a foil for the more prolific Antoine Griezmann. Whether, with the Frenchman in the autumn of his career, Alvarez represents some succession planning remains to be seen but Simeone has often been unafraid to overload with No 9s: now he is signing two at a time, with Alexander Sorloth also arriving.
If Atletico can feel the antithesis of City, Alvarez may get more starts but for a team who can fashion fewer chances. He should begin the biggest games, but they are less likely to include Champions League finals. He kept City in contention last season when others were out; Atletico’s fortunes, however, could stand or fall with him.
In a summer when Real Madrid have recruited Kylian Mbappe, Atletico are getting Alvarez and if his salary will be rather smaller, as it stands his fee will be the biggest paid in 2024. That confers a pressure on a man who has been a deluxe back-up; a World Cup winner now has to prove himself one of the world’s best centre-forwards.
And the jury is still out.
He had a different status at City; they had other requirements. But he did not always exude class. And given Phil Foden’s preference for operating centrally, Alvarez may not have had many opportunities as a No 10 this season had he stayed. But, even if many of Alvarez’s 19 goals came against weaker opponents and were aided by the supply line City possess, finding a striking understudy who was forever fit and sufficiently prolific was quite a feat for £14m. It could be altogether easier if City now have £82m to spend on Alvarez’s successor.
