IT WAS a season like no other. A World Cup win with his country Argentina in Qatar in December followed up by completing the treble with City in Istanbul in June.
Yet Blues striker Julian Alvarez also spent much of the last campaign touring the non-league grounds of the north west.
For no matter how much things were hotting up for himself on the pitch, he wanted to be there to support his two brothers, who were becoming stars in their own right albeit in English football's 10th tier.
Rafael and Agustin Alvarez were part of a large entourage of family members who accompanied the 21-year-old when he moved to Manchester in the summer of 2022 following his move from Argentinian giants River Plate.
And being football fanatics just like their younger sibling, they set out to try and find themselves a game.
That's where their unlikely association with Abbey Hey FC began. The Gorton club, who play in the North West Counties League First Division South, had a coach called John Fenton who worked at City's academy and after hearing they were looking to play for a local semi-pro team, made the connection, and they were invited down to training.
"Straight away you could tell they were two really good footballers," the club's chairman Jason Dunford told the M.E.N. "Technically wise, abilitywise. The only problem was the translation and communication. But throughout the world of football, football has its own language.
"They fitted in absolutely fantastically. It must have been a bit of an eye-opener for them, to come to Abbey Hey in Gorton from the backstreets of Argentina - it must have been quite daunting with some of the characters we had.
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