Julian Alvarez has admitted his decision to leave Manchester City was sparked by his limited role in the 2022/23 Champions League-winning campaign.
City bested Inter in the final that year but Alvarez did not feature at all during the game. He went unused on the bench, as he did in the semi-final first leg against Real Madrid. The return fixture against Los Blancos yielded just one minute, in which he still managed to score.
After 12 more months operating largely as backup to Erling Haaland, Alvarez took his talents elsewhere, sealing an £81m move to Atletico Madrid in August 2024.
"The truth is that City, since I arrived, trusted me," Alvarez told Infobae. "They brought me from River to Europe. I played a lot of games, scored a lot of goals, we won titles. That was perfect.
"And if I had stayed there I would have been comfortable too. I always said that I am very grateful to the club, but I did need something. Something inside me told me that I needed a different challenge, to look for something new, which was not motivation, because I will always want to continue for more, but something that, I don't know... A different challenge in my career. And I felt that here could be my place to develop better, to find my best version as a footballer. So it was a bit because of that.
"I do want to play the most important games. As I said, I don't know, in the Champions League final; I didn't get in. In the semi-final I didn't play much, and I would have liked to play in those kinds of games. And with what I said before, I was thinking about a change."
Alvarez left City with a return of 36 goals and 17 assists in 103 appearances. While 61 of those came as starts, the majority of his opportunities came when Haaland was either injured or resting, with the competition ahead of him so intense that Pep Guardiola even opted to deploy him in midfield at times.
Since moving to Spain, Alvarez has already struck 20 goals, forming an excellent partnership with Antoine Griezmann in Diego Simeone's attack.
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