MAN CITY HAVE HIT THE JACKPOT! SELLING SQUAD PLAYER JULIAN ALVAREZ FOR CLUB-RECORD £82M
Julian Alvarez’s first goals for Manchester City could be a metaphor for his career with the club. The Argentine made his third appearance for the club off the bench at home to Nottingham Forest with City already coasting, and he duly completed the rout with two ruthless finishes, turning a 4-0 win into a 6-0 hammering.
It was a highly efficient cameo display and a moment to savour for the player, who had only recently crossed the Atlantic to play in Europe for the first time. Someone else dominated the headlines that night though.
Erling Haaland had scored a hat-trick inside 38 minutes, notching his second treble in four games for the Cityzens. From then on it was abundantly clear that whatever Alvarez would do in a City shirt, he would forever be in Haaland’s shadow.
So it was pretty inevitable that at some point the forward, who is a regular starter for Argentina, a World Cup and double Copa America winner, would want to take centre stage at some point. He has now got the leading role he craved by signing for Atletico Madrid, where he will be the heir to Antoine Griezman.
Alvarez has been seeking a move away from City for some time, running into a familiar problem that South Americans face when moving to Manchester. He and his family will love living in Spain, home of the largest Argentine diaspora in the world.
City, meanwhile, will pocket a potential fee of £82 million($104m) and can celebrate their biggest sale of all time after what is yet another stunning piece of business from sporting director Txiki Begiristain and his team. The club can now look forward to spending the money on rearming Pep Guardiola for another assault on the Premier League title…
Massive profit
Alvarez is comfortably City’s most expensive sale, eclipsing the departures of Raheem Sterling and Ferran Torres by more than £17m ($21m), rising to £34m ($43m) if the add-ons are met. The profit margin is also far larger than for Sterling and Ferran who City signed for £44m ($55m) and £20m ($25m), respectively.
Indeed, the same month that City sold Ferran to Barcelona, Alvarez was signed from River Plate for a paltry £14m ($17m). He could earn the English champions up to £68m ($86m) in profit after contributing far more on the pitch than Ferran. He leaves City having scoring 36 goals and providing 18 assists in 103 appearances, only 62 of which were starts.
Trophies galore
Alvarez has further bloated his medal collection with City, leaving with two Premier League titles, an FA Cup, a Champions League, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup. He might have had bit-part roles in some of those triumphs, but he was the star of the show in the Club World Cup final, scoring twice to bookend the thrashing of Fluminense.
Alvarez knew his role and in that first season never complained about being a squad player, starting just 13 of City’s Premier League games. Indeed, Guardiola praised his patience, which he contrasted with Joao Cancelo’s reaction to being left out that eventually led to the Portugal defender being loaned to Bayern Munich.
Back on the bench
Alvarez would end up playing a much bigger role in his second season due to injuries to City’s top guns. He was the main beneficiary of Kevin De Bruyne’s long absence and for a period in late 2023 was City’s player with the most Premier League minutes, starting each of their first 25 matches.
He struck up a fine partnership with Haaland and then took the baton from the Norwegian when he injured his foot, scoring six goals between December and January.
Once De Bruyne and Haaland returned to full fitness, though, he had to resume his backseat role, meaning he was substitute in key matches such as the Manchester Derby, both legs against Real Madrid in the Champions League and the FA Cup final.
He would come on in all of those matches, but missed two glaring chances against United in the final as City suffered their first defeat in more than five months.
Face-off
The final few months of the season seemed to seal Alvarez’s fate. From his point of view, his lack of opportunities confirmed that he was only going to be a substitute when everyone was fit. Although he had begun to consider leaving City as early as in January, he started to do something about it in the summer.
Stories that he wanted to leave began to leak out to the Spanish press, and then he made his feelings clear when speaking on Argentine TV while at the Olympics. He said: “Last season, I was one of the players with the most minutes at City… You don’t like being left out of important matches, you want to contribute.”
And from City’s point of view, his final appearances underlined that while Alvarez was undoubtedly a good player, he was not a game-changing one. Guardiola made that clear with a salty response to Alvarez’s comments.
“I know he wants to play important moments, yeah. But the other ones do too,” the coach fired back while on City’s pre-season tour. “I read he wants to think about it. Okay, think about it and after that he will inform us what he wants to do.”
Succession plan
By then it was clear that, for the right price, Alvarez could leave. And the right price is certainly what City have got, making a quadruple return on their investment in the Argentine as they sell their second-choice striker for £31m ($39m) more than it cost to sign Haaland, who is likely to remain the go-to frontman for as long as he wishes to stay at the club.
City already began planning life without well-decorated back-up. In a strikingly similar deal to the one they struck to sign Alvarez two years previously, in January the club signed 18-year-old Claudio Echeverri from River Plate for £12.5m ($15m) plus add-on before loaning him straight back to his boyhood club. Echeverri is unlikely to link up with the first team this season, but he is an exciting prospect for the future.
Savinho has just joined from Troyes, and although the20-year-old is more of a winger than a like-for-like replacement for Alvarez, he can come close to matching the Argentine’s goals and assists, having spearheaded Girona’s incredible season in 2023-24 with nine strikes and 10 assists. Oscar Bobb, who has been City’s standout player in pre-season, can also step into the Alvarez role while James McAtee is set to stay with the first-team squad and can also fill in as a creator behind Haaland.
Replacing the old guard
And Alvarez’s sale now means City can make more big-name signings to replenish the squad overall. Eberechi Eze is a player City admire a lot and City are reported to have stepped up negotiations with Crystal Palace for the England international. He is valued at £68m ($86m), exactly the same initial amount of money City will pocket from selling Alvarez.
Eze is just one player City are considering as they look to a long term future that is likely to be without two of the most influential players in the Guardiola era, Kevin De Bruyne and Bernardo Silva. De Bruyne, 33, will stay this season but it is likely to be his last for the club, while Bernardo has long sought a future away from the Etihad Stadium and last year lowered his release clause to £50m ($63m) to make him more attractive to other European clubs.
It is difficult to imagine a City team without De Bruyne or Bernardo, but the club have never stood still and are always looking to the future. Their hawkish pursuit of Alvarez and their shrewd sale of him less than three years later is testament to that.
So City fans can say farewell and good luck to the the man they called ‘The Spider’, but most of all they will be toasting their scouting department and director of football for buying low and selling high.