Why Carlos Tevez is barking mad to think he deserves to play for Manchester City again
Seeing Carlos Tevez pick up a Premier League winner's medal with Manchester City would stick in the craw, writes Mike Walters
So Carlos Tevez reckons Roberto Mancini treated him like a dog.
Good on yer, Bobby Manc.
And
swanning off to Buenos Aires, absent without leave, has cost the
Argentine fugitive approaching £10 million in fines and docked wages.
Sounds like he got off lightly.
Let's
put Tevez's 'sabbatical' in context. In any normal profession, if he
had thrown a wobbler and left the country on November 7, and milked it
for 99 days before returning, he would have been sacked.
And if he
was expecting Manchester City to welcome him back into the fold with
floral garlands, brass bands, bunting and fairy cakes, he was badly
advised. City have been doing fine without him, and if his return proves
a divisive influence at the Etihad on the title run-in, the fans will
not forgive him.
To be a professional footballer is a blessing
conferred on only a tiny fraction of the working population. Towards the
top end, the financial rewards are phenomenal.
And Tevez's
work-to-rule was an insult to the coal miners, steel workers, oil
riggers, grave diggers, shelf stackers, meat packers, grease monkeys,
council flunkeys, number crunchers, flower bunchers, brickies, bookies,
bakers, butchers and plastic prawn sandwich scoffers who buy tickets to
watch City every week.
Tevez has had three months to come up with a
decent excuse for his refusal to play when Mancini summoned him from
the bench in the Champions League defeat against Bayern Munich.
But all he can muster is a disingenuous, self-pitying version in which team spirit was evidently the first casualty of war.
Tevez
recalls that he was "in kind of a bad mood that night." Diddums. Just
read again his justification for mutiny and feel your stomach turn.
"When
he (Mancini) brings on De Jong and takes off Dzeko and we're losing
2-0, I thought it was a defensive substitution and went and sat back on
the bench.
"So I'd already warmed up for 10 minutes and he has
this attitude that he would rather lose 2-0 than 4-0, so I sat down. At
the same time Dzeko comes off and he's really angry. He has a go at
Mancini and they have an argument.
"Then he (Mancini) turns round
and sees me sat down and you can imagine what happened. He's in the
middle of an argument and he tells me to keep warming up. He treated me
like a dog."
So much for Tevez's earlier claim that his refusal to
play was all a "misunderstanding." That TV interview in his homeland,
before he flew back to Britain this week, leaves little scope for
misinterpretation.
And here's the rub, Carlos: If Mancini doesn't
deliver trophies to his oil baron paymasters, after being handed a
transfer and wages budget large enough to buy an archipelago, we all
know what happens to managers who come up short.
But what happens to players who refuse to play because they are truculent, selfish, pampered prima-donas from the Pampas?
Since
Tevez laid down his tools and clocked off at the Allianz Arena, he has
shown little contrition towards the fans who pay his extortionate wages.
He
has made no effort to apologise to his manager, let alone his
team-mates. English football has yet to embrace the concept of a
mid-season break with one notable exception - Carlos Tevez, who awarded
one to himself.
Make no mistake, Manchester City would be worthy
champions if they go on to win the title. But for working-class fans all
over the country, who have to scrimp and save for their ticket money
every week, it would be a repugnant image to see Tevez lifting the
Premier League trophy in May.
Treated like a dog, eh? Woof, woof!
