Teenage sensation Claudio Echeverri has infuriated fans of Argentine giants River Plate over the way he has engineered his £21.75million move to Manchester City.
Echeverri, who will celebrate his 18th birthday on Tuesday, confirmed he had rejected a new contract with the Buenos Aires-based club just minutes after helping them win the Champions Trophy on his full debut. Sunday Mirror Sport revealed on December 3 that City were closing in on the attacking midfielder, who has been dubbed the new Lionel Messi in his homeland.
Nicknamed El Diablito - which translates from Spanish as Little Devil - Echeverri will sign a six-year contract with City this week and will be immediately loaned back to River Plate until January 2025. But River Plate’s fanatical supporters are angry that they are losing another talented youngster to the Premier League champions, after seeing Julian Alvarez make the same move.
And they feel betrayed that Echeverri revealed his intentions just moments after collecting a winner’s medal following River Plate’s 2-0 victory over Rosario Central on December 23. After being targeted by irate fans on social media who feared Echeverri was planning to sign a pre-contract agreement with City in June so that he could move to England for free six months later when his contract with River Plate expires, he responded by confirming that a deal had already been sealed for the Blues to meet his buy-out clause.
But the Argentine club have since made it clear that they believed they had a verbal agreement with the player’s Italy-born agent Enzo Montepaone for Echeverri to sign a contract extension that would allow them to double the clause to £43.5million. But they failed to get the contract signed before Echeverri played a starring role for Argentina at the Under-17 World Cup earlier this month.
River Plate coach Martin Demichelis has also come under fire. Demichelis won the Premier League and two EFL Cups during his three-year stint at the Etihad as a player, and is believed to have told City that Echeverri is the real deal when they sought his opinion.
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The Etihad club moved quickly after it became apparent that Barcelona, Real Madrid and Chelsea were amongst a host of clubs also circling around the attacking midfielder. Demichelis has been criticised for failing to give Echeverri more minutes on the pitch, limiting him to just four substitute appearances before handing a first start in the showpiece final.
Once City opened talks with River Plate and Montepaone, they launched a successful charm offensive on Echeverri and his family, with Alvarez sending messages to confirm how well he has been cared for since moving to Manchester. Echeverri’s junior club Deportivo Lujan are now contemplating whether to name their new stadium after their former player after being told they will bank a £780,000 windfall as part of the deal which saw the player sign for River Plate’s academy at the age of 10.
Lujan are currently constructing their own home after being forced to rent pitches for their kids to play on since being formed 16 years ago. River Plate agreed to a 15 percent sell-on clause when they signed Echeverri, but only to a limit of one million US dollars.
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