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We knew the cost of Sergio Aguero to Manchester City but we couldn't know his value to the richest football club in the world. Now we can. Now it hits us in the face with the force and the urgency of his brilliant 30-minute intervention in his new club's 4-0 opening Premier League victory over Swansea City, a team of quite affecting fluency right up to the moment Diego Maradona's son-in-law turned them into so many pieces of splintered matchwood.
It is true that no one player, not Pele or Di Stefano or George Best made a team, but it is also right that he can change, utterly, the way it thinks about itself. This is the promise made by Sergio Aguero.
With such a man on the field it will surely be that much easier for City to believe they are indeed ready to compete at the highest level.
The scale of his impact and potential meaning was only partly to do with the evidence of perfect technique and, at least on this occasion, ravenous hunger. There was also the joy, the explosion of camaraderie in a team which previously might have picked a whole series of arguments at the Last Supper. The new man suddenly made anything seem possible.
It is that sensation when a new player arrives and all those who play alongside him, and those who merely watch, feel a gust of not hope but certainty. Zinedine Zidane did that when he arrived at the Bernabeu, as did Marco van Basten at San Siro and Dennis Bergkamp at Highbury.
No, you're right, we shouldn't get carried away. Aguero will doubtless face much heavier challenges than the one provided by the newly promoted Welsh club but this is no reason to hold back a powerful suspicion.
It is that when set against all of City's wealth, and their previous predilection for throwing such great lumps of it at players of questionable talent and extremely troubling personality, the £38m signing of Aguero already looks like stunning good value.
This is because what Aguero did in a few minutes was something that had proved beyond the powers of such as Carlos Tevez, Yaya Touré, Gareth Barry, James Milner and Mario Balotelli, especially Balotelli, and manager Roberto Mancini.
It is not to dispute such varied talents, only to say that Aguero's astonishing gift was to slash away all that talk of two-, three-, four-year plans and a slow march to the peak of English and European football, and say that there is only one way to push back the horizons of even the most expensive football team, and that the time when you do that is not tomorrow but today.
What you do, if you crave the transforming moment, is inject into your team an authentically inspiring player, one who has both the talent and self-belief to impose on any situation. Even in their march to Champions League qualification and their first significant trophy in 35 years, City so often displayed the body language of doubt. Their bench resembled a dressing station for the wounds of the psyche.
Tevez sulked and pouted in between telling thrusts on the field. Balotelli was at best a dubious asset. David Silva, for all his lovely, acute touch, must have felt he too often performed in the company of strangers.
He had no reason to feel such a weight when Aguero helped him on his way to his man-of-the-match award with an assist which came straight from the football heavens. Balotelli never made it on to the field and even he might have understood the reason for his idleness when Aguero scored his two goals with a stunning combination of bite and technical brilliance.
For Mancini, such a performance was both deliverance and a challenge. He was freed from the oppressive sense that City remained a team falling short of optimum performance – an impression only deepened by their halting effort against Manchester United at Wembley – but also obliged to build on the inspiration provided by his new man.
The most enduring criticism of Mancini is that if he understands football, as a former player of perfectionist leanings, he grasps less well the need to liberate a team from its own inhibitions. There was much of that requirement in evidence again before Aguero was sent out to introduce himself.
He put down a calling card of exquisite simplicity. He said what he could do and the manner in which he would do it. When it was over he thanked his new fans and said he was anxious to earn their trust out on the field, the only place where it really mattered.
No, one man doesn't make a team. But he can redefine its values and set new standards and what would any top club pay for that? City – for once in their new life – must feel they have parted with just a little loose change.<br /><br />-- Wed Aug 17, 2011 9:34 am --<br /><br />Oh, and the other one:
Aguero translates as "omen" in Spanish and as if the debut cameo by Manchester City's new Argentinian striker on Monday evening was not enough, there was an ominous declaration of intent from the player when the dust settled on his performance yesterday. "This is a chance for me to change the league," he said. "I know it is a competitive league but we are here to win it in the end."
It doesn't take long for the weight of expectation on new City players to quell any impulse to talk about titles, but Sergio Aguero has never seemed overly burdened. The comparisons with Carlos Tevez will inevitably come thick and fast in the weeks ahead – the two bull-like strikers grew up less than 20 miles apart in the Vila Itati neighbourhood of Buenos Aires – but while Tevez has been unable to lay his hat anywhere for long in England, Aguero has lived the life of a free spirit ever since he left his country as an 18-year-old.
The tattoo of his nickname, "Kun", which he wears on the inside of his right arm, is inscribed in tengwar, a script created by J R R Tolkien and used by the elves in his books. The Aguero humour is elfish too. The soft Argentinian accent is almost imperceptible but there was a glint in his eye last year when he was asked what he would be if not a footballer. "A footballer's wife," he replied.
City dedicate long hours to try to understand the psyche of their transfer targets – their 50-page dossier on David Silva even included details on his Valencia home, so they could find him something similar in Manchester – and the club's Spanish scout Rob Newman could tell his bosses with certainty that Aguero would not arrive with the same baggage as Tevez.
The reasons are not complex. The science of scouting attaches great significance to the parental forces in the lives of new recruits. While there is no evidence anywhere in the Tevez story of an encouraging paternal presence, the latest City striker's escape from Vila Itati owes much to Leonel, the father who drove taxis in the neighbourhood to make ends meet while trying to break into the game and then coached one of his son's first youth teams.
It was not an entirely straightforward progression to Europe when Aguero's extraordinary success for Independiente brought him a move to Atletico Madrid at the age of only 18, five years ago. In his first year in Spain, there was too much meat and fizzy drinks and not enough sleep. His game suffered. But it was the extended Aguero family entourage – seven siblings and the parents, who would decamp to Madrid for three months at a time – which made the crucial difference. The same will happen in Manchester.
Another significant part of the story has been Giannina Maradona, his redoubtable wife, who is the daughter of Diego Maradona and a stabilising presence from the moment she and Aguero first braved the fans and paparazzi at the Vicente Calderon. It took them 15 minutes to walk the 100 metres from stadium to car. "His wife, Giannina, has helped him a lot," said the Real Zaragoza manager, Javier Aguierre, who was Aguero's first coach in Europe. "If she is with him in Manchester – as I believe she will be – then he will have no problems adapting. He is from a lovely family and his brothers and sisters are charming, too."
The relief is already palpable around City at the arrival of a player with a stable background and a smile on his face. We can expect a circus in the weeks to come, with father-in-law likely to be in attendance. "He talks a lot and for sure he will have seen my second goal," Aguero admitted yesterday. "I think he will call me in a couple of minutes to congratulate me and I think he will come to watch me when he has some time [and has completed] his [current] work in Dubai." But City will take Maradona over the familiar, doleful tale of Tevez and Vanesa Mansilla – the mother of his two daughters, whose love of a simple, latinate life is said to be behind her reasons for staying in Buenos Aires with them.
The differences extend further. Aguero, who can lead the line or operate behind the striker in the trequartista role which has fascinated the City manager, Roberto Mancini, ever since he wrote a research paper on the subject during his first job at Fiorentina, is generally brighter than Tevez – sharper and more adaptable. He has scored marginally more league goals than him in the past four years – 70, including Monday night's pair – and it is his pace which has led three European coaches before Mancini to compare him to Romario. Aguero told El Pais in 2009 that he was born to gambetear (dribble). "It's dribbling that gives me my life."
The younger man also brings the greater experience in Europe – 16 goals in 34 appearances in European competition against Tevez's six in 33 – though it is in the work-rate department that the 23-year-old cannot hold a candle to his compatriot, four years his senior. Tevez directly contributed to 43 per cent of Manchester City's 60 goals last season, while Aguero scored or assisted in 35 per cent of Atletico's 62 goals in La Liga, and statistics don't tell the half of it. Aguero's biggest weakness is a head that can drop – not a characteristic that Mancini would welcome, especially if the Argentine is playing behind Mario Balotelli.
The prospect of Mancini having these two Argentines to call on is an unexpected one if Tevez, as seems increasingly likely, fails to find an escape route from Manchester. The pair will have plenty to chew over on away trips in Europe. Both are passionate about Argentina's cumbia music genre, for instance. Aguero was the lead singer for Los Leales in their recording of a song in his name while Tevez has performed with the Pialo Vago group. But Aguero was signed in the expectation that Tevez would be leaving and their similar games suggest that they will rarely feature in the same starting XI.
Aguero has already articulated his views on the Premier League in a way that Tevez has not. "Players in England are bigger," he said in an interview last year. "In Argentina, you dribbled and you got away; in Europe, the defenders are beasts. You beat one and there's another on top of you. If I get hit, what am I going to say? If they hit you, you take it. If I score goals in the air it's because I've got a hard head and I don't mind getting in there."
He has been as good as his word, adding yesterday that "if Roberto wants me to play with [Edin] Dzeko I will do it. If it is another player or with Carlos I will do it. I will just do my best." All of which suggests Tevez might even find himself with a serious challenger for his starting position. Mildly ominous for him, but seriously so for the rest of the Premier League.
Start of something special: How other foreign stars performed on their debuts
Eric Cantona Arguably the most important foreign import in the history of English football had a low-key debut. On 8 February 1992 Cantona came on for Steve Hodge as Leeds United lost 2-0 at Oldham.
Jürgen Klinsmann The German international headed in a Darren Anderton cross at Hillsborough on 20 August 1994. Tottenham beat Sheffield Wednesday 4-3, and Klinsmann celebrated his goal with what became his trademark dive.
Dennis Bergkamp A quiet start to his Arsenal career: he failed to score in the 1-1 draw with Middlesbrough on 20 August 1995, and had to wait seven games before scoring twice, excellently, against Southampton.
Fabrizio Ravanelli Perhaps the most exciting debut by an import, Ravanelli marked his arrival from Juventus with a hat-trick in Middlesbrough's 3-3 home draw with Liverpool in August 1996.
Thierry Henry Arsenal's all-time top scorer started slowly, coming on at half-time for Freddie Ljungberg on 7 August 1999, in a match in which Arsenal needed a last-minute Frank Sinclair own-goal to overcome Leicester City 2-1.
Mido Debuts can be deceptive, however. Mido, on loan from Roma, scored twice in Tottenham's 3-1 defeat of Portsmouth on 5 February 2005. The rest of his time in England was not quite so good.
Nickname is child's play
Sergio Aguero is one of the few Premier League footballers allowed to wear a nickname on his shirt. He has "Kun Aguero", "Kun" being a childhood nickname due to his resemblance to Kum Kum, the lead character in 'The Adventures of Kum Kum', a cartoon series from the late 1970s, made by Japanese studio Sunrise, Inc.
