Julian Alvarez is a Manchester City treble winner and Club World Cup champion, preparing to face Real Madrid this week. But if things had worked out differently, he could have been playing for Los Blancos....CONTINUE READING
Last season, when Manchester City destroyed Real Madrid in the Champions League at the Etihad, Julian Alvarez strolled off the bench to add the icing on the cake of one of the Blues’ best-ever European performances.
Alvarez wants more than a five-minute cameo when City and Madrid lock horns again this season, knowing there will be a clear plan in place to beat the Spanish giants for a second season running for him to express himself.
Had history taken a different turn 13 years ago, however, Alvarez could have been part of the shell-shocked Real side who were blown away by City 12 months ago and who are looking for revenge this month.
Back in 2011, when Alvarez was a promising 11-year-old playing for his local team in Argentina, he was invited to Girona, Spain, for a month-long trial with Real Madrid. He played a tournament wearing the famous white strip of Real, impressing their coaches and doing enough for the club to explore a deal to sign him permanently.
“I was there for about 20 days,” he told MEN Sport, underplaying the significance of the trial ahead of this week’s Champions League quarter-final. “I was just 11 years old. To go to Spain, all my family had to move. It’s already in the past.”
Claudio Gorgerino, mayor of Alvarez’s hometown of Calchin, previously told Infobae: “He spent a month in Madrid. He made such a difference playing here that they came to see him from everywhere. He would overpower his opponents. He’d go left or right and get into the box.”
However, FIFA rules recently introduced at the time meant that clubs couldn’t sign youngsters from another country until they were 16, unless their whole family moved with them. For the Alvarez family, that wasn’t an option.
During a feature published by City last year, his mother Mariana explained: “He always showed his quality, the clubs wanted him, but he didn’t want to go anywhere alone and neither did we. He was still so young.”
The family still have a photo album of Alvarez wearing his Madrid kits during the tournament, as well as newspaper clippings from Argentina where the trial made headlines in local press.
His father Gustavo added: “He played a tournament, they won, he scored some goals. The director of the tournament told us that he could stay. He said that they used to sign boys from 13 to 17 years. He was 11 at that moment so the whole family would have moved to go and live there.
“It wasn’t easy at the time, he didn’t want to go anywhere when he was younger. And then at the age of 15 he told me, ‘Dad, if a club wants to sign me, I’m going to take it.’ That’s what happened when he was 15 years old. He said, ‘If it’s River Plate, better.'”
Real’s loss was River’s gain, after another trial at Boca Juniors. Alvarez rose to the River first team, scoring or assisting 85 goals in 122 appearances for the club he supported. He won five major trophies with River including the Argentinian championship and Copa Libertadores, before moving to City in 2022.
“It was a good experience but it’s in the past,” Alvarez tells MEN Sport of the Madrid trial, looking ahead to the Champions League. “Now I’m different, I’m a professional player. If we listen to what Pep tells us to do, we are going to win.”
There is a confidence from Alvarez that City can repeat their two-legged victory over Real from last season. Alvarez was on the scoresheet in that semi-final, but wants more involvement this year.
“Of course I’d love to score again. Last game I was only able to play five minutes and I scored,” he recalled. “This time I’d love to play a bit more and of course score.
“It’s going to be hard [to retain the Champions League]. Last season was hard, this season will be hard again. But we know what we have to do and we have the things to do it again. We always learn, especially winning five different competitions, we learned a lot. But we always see the next game and we always focus on winning, winning, winning the next game.
