There aren't too many players who would turn down Real Madrid and then walk out on Manchester City.
The two have been among the best European football has to offer over the past decade. The two clubs have shared the last three Champions League titles and there hasn't been a final without either since 2020.
But Julian Alvarez rejected Real Madrid as a youngster and chose to leave City last summer for more regular football and big-game opportunities. He will get his wish tonight when he plays in a Champions League last-16 at the Bernabeu for Atletico Madrid.
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It will serve as something of a reminder as to why the 25-year-old left the Etihad in the summer. In 2023, with City on course for the treble, they thumped Real in the last four, winning 4-0 in Manchester. Alvarez was given just a few minutes as a late sub and was an unused sub in the final.
That formed part of his decision-making when moving to Spain last summer and he enters March still with eyes on a La Liga/Champions League double with Atletico. But had history been different he might have been turning out on the other side of the city.
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 last year. "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 in 2023, 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 told MEN Sport of the Madrid trial. "Now I'm different, I'm a professional player."
His job tonight is to down the holders and continue his quest for a second Champions League medal in two years.
