Tevez heads for City exit door having fooled everybody.
There’s something troubling about Carlos Tevez’s public image. It’s far too healthy.
Today, of course, was a landmark day in one of the most drawn-out transfer sagas in recent memory; Tevez has finally decided that he wants to leave Manchester City. Although you can never really rule out a u-turn and a misquote claim, it does actually seem like he means it this time.
He was definitely more sincere then when he went on an Argentine chatshow and derided Manchester for its lack of appeal as a holiday destination, or when he used his complex family situation as a leverage tool with which to drill the Abu Dhabi United Group’s resources.
Tevez has of course, rightly, had a range of favourable adjectives thrown at his playing attributes – tenacious, hard-working, lethal in front of goal – but they have a tendency to mask his underwhelming public image off the pitch. From the moment he and Javier Mascherano dropped out of the sky on transfer-deadline day five years ago, his existence in the Premier League has been defined by money.
A broadsheet journalist – possibly Patrick Barclay – once described Tevez as an industry, and that’s a fairly negative tag to have on you. In his career, he’s trawled from Argentina to England – and maybe now to Spain – shifting currency like a Wall Street Trader, and never pausing to grow any roots. Like a magnet amongst iron-fillings, Tevez just attracts cash.
Carlos the player will always be loved his own fans – he has all the qualities that seem to be fading out of the modern game. He’s personable, he works hard, connects with the fans, and seems to understand the privileges his profession affords him. But off the pitch there’s a darker element to his career, a footballer-for-hire that Kia Joorabchian tactically positions in the richest possible cash stream. From Boca to Corinthians, to West Ham and on to both halves of Manchester – each move with a new financial incentive for MSI, Joorachbian or Tevez, and each departure leaving varying levels of acrimony.
It’s strange, for example, that he still enjoys a good rapport with West Ham’s fans – yes, there’s some intermittent booing when he returns to Upton Park, in the eyes of the majority he’s the player that saved them from relegation and not the one that left the club for free and cost them millions over the murky details of his registration.
‘He runs a lot, he scores goals, and he does that thing with his shin-pad that has something to do with his daughter’.
Maybe, but Carlos is running for Carlos, not the shirt – he’s the embodiment of the modern player, rather than the throwback he’s mistaken for.
scumbag!