Manchester City must tell Carlos Tevez “You’re fired!” There must surely be no way back now for former Manchester United and West Ham star.
I refused to play for my team once. I was 10-years-old, and it was a lame inter-house lunchtime school tournament. I wanted instead to have a kickabout with the rest of my mates who had their own game going on. The teacher tore strips off me, and I learned my lesson.
The point is, I was 10-years-old, and I was not earning in excess of £130,000 a week.
Carlos Tevez is a grown adult, who should have learned his lesson many years ago. To be picked for a team is a privilege not a chore, he is a professional sportsman, who is looked up to around the world for his talent, if not his behaviour.
The controversial striker may now have burned his last bridge. City should fire their former captain and be done with it.
They don’t have to worry about him popping up at one of their rivals, because no club in England would touch him with a barge pole. Any employment law suit he would file would be laughed off by oil-rich Sheikh Mansour. But will Sheikh Mansour be willing to burn £40m? Are there grounds for suing Tevez in the way Chelsea sued Adrian Mutu?
Having him around is an unwanted distraction to the players who do want to achieve success, and if results do not go City’s way, dissent could easily spread. Pundit Graeme Souness described him on Sky as a ‘bad apple’.
He is not wrong, and its time for City to throw this particular apple in the bin, and move on.
Update:
This morning Tevez has denied he refused to play. The BBC has quoted Tevez as saying “There was some confusion on the bench and I believe my position may have been misunderstood.” Hmmmm.
The problem now for City is that this risks running and running with Mancini and Tevez both denying each others accusations. They need a strong hand to get control of the situation but with no permanent chief executive in place, following the departure of Garry Cook, it’ll fall to interim chief John MacBeath to manage the situation as best he can.
Image: © LivingOS
Receive exclusive football transfer news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
