Atlético reportedly sign Júlio Alves

AS reported, citing the Portuguese news agency Lusa, that Atlético would pay Rio Ave €2.5 million for the midfielder Júlio Regufe Alves. The 20-year-old was expected to travel to Madrid within days to complete the move.

One detail was always going to attract scrutiny among supporters: Alves was represented by Jorge Mendes. Six months earlier, Mendes had brokered the €7 million signing of the central midfielder Elias, a player without a European passport, arriving at a moment when the squad’s obvious need was a left winger to replace Simão. That transfer had not been well received, and any subsequent business through the same agent invited the same questions.

Alves would not have joined his new team-mates immediately in any case. He had been called up by the Portugal Under-20 squad for the World Cup in Colombia, which would have delayed his arrival until later in the summer.

His record to that point was modest. Alves spent the first half of the 2010-11 season on loan at Ribeirão, where he appeared twice and scored once, before returning to Rio Ave in January and featuring in nine league games, three of them as a starter. He was better known at that stage as the younger brother of Bruno Alves, the Portugal international centre-back then playing for Zenit St Petersburg.

The summer of 2011 was one of the busiest and least settled in the club’s recent history. Agüero and De Gea both left, Gregorio Manzano arrived as coach and was replaced before the end of the year, and a long list of names was linked with the squad, some of whom arrived, many of whom did not. Radamel Falcao’s signing from Porto that August was the transfer that ultimately defined the window. The club history covers how that season resolved itself, the legends gallery the players who came out of it, and the archive holds the day-by-day reporting from those weeks.