As you’re probably aware by now, Manchester City knocked back a (presumably ghost-) written transfer request from their obstinate striker Carlos Tevez over the weekend, a matter of days after he told the club’s official website that he was ‘happy with the sacrifices’ he’d been forced to make by committing himself to Sheikh Mansour‘s sideline in über-capitalism.
Since then, Tevez has released a statement via his representatives insisting that his relationship with certain City executives have now broken down ‘beyond repair’, and that he first asked to leave the club back in August.
The Argentinian hobgoblin is also adamant that the club’s decision to paint him as a swarthy, money-grabbing mercenary has done nothing to entice him into reversing his attempts at a contract putsch:
“My feelings have not changed and it is regrettable we have reached this situation but it is something I have felt for some time and have spent many hours thinking this through.
I wanted to leave in the summer, but was convinced to return to the club. Sadly, my feelings have not changed.
I could have signed an improved contract, offered by the club during this season; however, this decision is not about money. I have made that clear to both the board and the management on several occasions.
I hugely resent the management’s suggestions that I have been unduly influenced by [my agent Kia Joorabchian]. I am disappointed that the management should now see fit to try to portray the situation in another light.”
The ‘portrayal’ in question is a reference to the initial statement released by City on Saturday evening to confirm that they had rejected Tevez’s transfer request, in which the club implied that the striker had been blindly pressured by his agents into forcing a coup – also stating that his agency’s repeated requests for contract renewal talks were in ‘stark contrast’ to the player’s public standpoint:
“The written transfer request is in stark contrast to Carlos’ stated position in both public and club contexts.
Significantly, over recent months, the club has also received numerous requests from Carlos’ representative to renegotiate and improve his playing contract as well as more recently a request to extend that contract by another year.”
If this morning’s press is anything to go by, it now seems that City are prepared to deal with this little hiccup in the manner in which they’ve become accustomed to operating i.e. by chucking wads of cash at the problem and hoping it all goes away.
Several of the national newspapers are suggesting that the club are now willing to offer Tevez a new two-year (thus reducing the time he will be bound to the club by a full 18 months), £325,000-a-week contract and/or a one-off payment of as much as £5 million in a bid to entice him into staving off a return to Buenos Aires for the foreseeable future – or, at the very least, the next six months.
The figure that Tevez has been cutting for the last few years is that of a man increasingly at odds with the emotional rigours of his profession – with the official line being that he lives in constant torment as a consequence of being separated from his young daughters for prolonged periods of time, which is, of course, perfectly valid.
The usual line trotted out is that, due to said profession allowing him to rake in a small fortune on a seven-day cycle, Tevez undoubtedly has the means to relocate his brood from their current home in Argentina’s capital to the much closer quarters of either England or Spain – the latter sharing a common tongue with his homeland.
However, a salient fact which is usually omitted from such potential solutions is that we are not just talking about an aggrandized footballer here, we are talking about real people with real lives – and Tevez’s reluctance to ship his family half-way across the globe, regardless of whether he can afford to or not, is perfectly understandable given his offspring’s tender years.
That said, Tevez is hardly helping his own cause by repeatedly (and publicly) stating his desire to walk out on City/join whichever prominent club piques his fancy/retire from the game altogether.
For example, after inducing a Premier League suspension by picking up a fifth booking of the season against West Ham on Saturday, Tevez requested, and was duly handed, ‘special dispensation to take three-day leave overseas’.
Manager Roberto Mancini initially granted permission for the short soiree (which was almost immediately extended to four days at Tevez behest) under the assumption that the forward would be flying home to visit the family and surroundings that he constantly pines for – instead, Tevez apparently flew to Tenerife to ‘clear his head’ with a long weekend at a five-star villa resort.
Never has a homesick man been so hard to empathise with.
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