Can trophy-magnet Alvarez shine in Simeone's system?

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.

- RICHARD JOLLY

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.