Pep Guardiola is always at pains to claim player recruitment and contracts are the preserve of his great friend and Manchester City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain.
“Ask Txiki,” or a variant thereof is generally snapped back at any press conference enquiry concerning a new but yet-to-be-confirmed arrival.
Of course, no player will come into Premier League champions’ carefully cultivated first-team environment with Guardiola’s say-so, and the youngster expected to be his next attacking singing comes with a pedigree to delight the City boss.
"What Gallardo has done with River is incredible," Guardiola told TNT Sports in 2019, discussing Marcelo Gallardo’s stunning tenure in charge of Boca Juniors giants River Plate.
"Some things are inexplicable. Every year three coaches are named as the best in the world, and he's never among them. I can't understand it. It's as if there's nothing else in the world apart from Europe."
Gallardo was appointed in 2014 and his trophy haul at River now stands at 14 after Manchester City-bound forward Julian Alvarez starred as top scorer in the 2021 Primera Division triumph.
“In recent River history, Gallardo is a before and after, a turning point,” Dan Edwards, who covers Argentinian and South American football for Goal.com, told City Is Ours.
“Before Gallardo came in they were really a club on the downslope. They’d been relegated for the first time in their history and clawed their way back up. They were rebuilding.
“They’d won the league again before he took over but they were a team without an identity, stacked up with mediocre players really not making much of a difference.
“Gallardo understands what River’s about. They’ve always been a team who want to play on the front foot, attacking, in possession.”
Club great Enzo Francescolli has been a wonderful ally to Gallardo - the Begiristain to his Guardiola as a shrewd technical director.
Senior and youth players have been recruited in line with Gallardo’s signature style of high-pressing, high tempo football that features frequent exchanges of positions between players and in-game tweaks to the formation.
In case you hadn’t already worked this one out, Guardiola and Gallardo share a mutual admiration of Marcelo Bielsa.
“River press harder than anyone in Argentine football, River run harder than anyone in Argentine football, they have more shots, they score more goals,” Edwards explained.
“He’s won over the neutrals. Personally, I don't have any sort of allegiance with River but I can say it’s one of the games you look at on the fixture list every weekend and say that’s going to be worth a watch.”
If Alvarez completes a move to City on a five-year contract over the coming days, he is expected to be loaned back to River until July this year - possibly later in the calendar if Gallardo’s men remain in contention for a third Copa Libertadores of his reign.
But the 21-year-old’s departure, when it comes, will not present a particularly new problem to the River boss, who has got used to persistently remodelling a team robbed of its star names on an annual basis - many of those like Alvarez who has plucked from the youth ranks
Gallardo’s own contract expires at the end of 2022 and questions linger over whether he will take his talents east for those poor blinkered souls who Guardiola feels are missing out.
“We have this habit of thinking that when you’re doing well in South America, the next logical step is you’ve got to go to Europe - it’s built in to how you see football, even for those of us who cover South American football,” Edwards added.
“But with Gallardo extending his contract [last year]... I thought this might have been the year he’d take six months off and then see what happens in the northern hemisphere in the summer.
“It didn’t happen and perhaps Gallardo is happy at River. Maybe he might leave next December but I don’t know if he’s motivated to take a European job. It would be a dangerous assumption, considering how long he’s been at River to say the European job is the be-all and end-all. Perhaps it’s not.”
Even if Gallardo doesn’t end up following his latest protégé to Europe, City fans should be in no doubt that the lavishly gifted Alvarez has enjoyed a schooling that places him in-sync with Guardiola’s footballing vision.
When we look for reasons why Alvarez is likely to go straight from Argentina to the Premier League without any further loans in between, the man who has guided him from the dugout to this breakout point is pretty near the top of the list.
