He's way more skilful and a better finisher. But Alvarez trumps him for pressing. However thought Omar ran his socks off today covering for the immobile Kev.
Alvarez it's not the greatest dribbler out there, yet he is doing it more often and he is great attacking gaps when those are open with quite a bit of pace, Omar "way more skillful" it's kind of silly.
A better finisher? clearly not, even Alvarez playing all over the pitch, still has better numbers than him in his carreer (in more demaning scenarios too) and has a knack for important ones and tends to be at his best (even not scoring) against big rivals or scenarios. In fact his ratio in CLs so far it's quite great among literally anyone.
Sometimes I think the desire of fans to see a player that we like to triumph gets a bit too over the top. It's true that Julian it's no born crack/phenom a la Kun, it's no Tevez, yet people didn't quite get that he never was fully utilized in the best possible way. He could have been City's Muller, Villa, (players talented that are so intelligent that maximize their best traits and improve with time). I remark INTELLIGENCE, too many dorks in City since time and an asset not few times overlooked because of some feint, or skill (Doku).
City kind of loose sight of what they had in their hands, he is not a player also that would wait there and deal easily with the Grealish treatment. I dunno what Pep was thinking there, he clearly looked really pissed off when he got noticed he'll leave (dunno how much this played in not replacing him inmediatly like City should have done). He'll be a pro, yet he has blood in his veins, he won't be waiting as a sub for ethernity.
In his first season he had to steal balls in order to score
half the times (or even more, anyone seeing every goal from him in City, he barely had great service, lots of his goals came after him hustling, rebounds, strikes out of nothing, etc).
He ran into channels constantly without receiving a single ball after for instance 5 of those (too much ball sobbing even in the best of times with City style) and an excessive focus on Erling as the receiving end (while Elring on contrair liked a lot to play with him, he clearly liked Alvarez direct style).
The mids and wingers where the ones not taking advantage of Erling's and Alvarez best trait of going to space with pace. When City still was winning it didn't bother that much, every moment the team got worse, those "bad traits" of not risking the ball, of the oldies passing it between themselves, of those dropping form, etc, ended in this current situation.
At the end of his stage in City, Alvarez was indeed a lesser, tired (because of the abusive quantity of matches under his belt in thsoe years) and a kind of frustrated version of his best self and that it's the main reason he left, yet he never surrender and still produced and didn't moan, he needed some fresh air that I think City could have provided that, yet was harder to do it.
I don't think either Aleti it's the perfect scenario for him, in fact he gave all in these last crucial matches against the top dogs, yet his team let him down. He would be right now a better suit for a team like Barca with more ball involvemente yet at the same time, quite assertive and direct like nowadays Barca can be. So at the end of the day, to imply that a less proven player like Omar, already has a better carreer, a better finisher and way more skill, it's kind of an over the top apreciation of current and past Omar and involves quite a lot of demeriting what Alvarez already achieved as a player and did so far.
This is not a diss on Omar, far from it.