A quick conversation with his agent might have persuaded Carlos Tevez that failing to honour the terms of your contract wasn’t the best course of action, but it’s hard to imagine another Premier League club taking on the Argentinian any time soon.
By David Sheehan
Last night was an eventful one for Manchester City and their manager Roberto Mancini. Not only did he have to contend with a comprehensive defeat – he also had to suffer toy throwing from three of his players who have 109 international caps between.
You could say that Dzeko showed understandable frustration, given that he was taken off quite early in a change of tack from his manager. His reaction wasn’t too dissimilar to a player who is called ashore when his side has been reduced to ten men. He was sacrificed in an effort to change the direction in which the game was starting to drift. While he showed a level of immaturity, the big Bosnia & Herzegovina striker will probably have cooled off by now, and it’s hard to imagine there will be a huge fallout from his fit of pique.
Mancini’s explanation of the Zabaleta incident was curious insofar as the Italian accepted that he erred in some way in taking the Argentinian off, and said that he would apologise to his defender.
Which brings us to Tevez, for whom – surely – no excuses can be made. Not satisfied with taking every opportunity to tell us all what a hell-hole Manchester is and how he can’t wait to leave, the man who is now more super-sulk than super-sub sunk to a new low last night.
It’s interesting to note how his story seems to have changed in the space of a few hours. Last night, Tevez stated that he was in no state to come on – “I wasn’t feeling good, physically or mentally” – but this morning we heard Tevez claim that he never refused to come on and was “ready to play”.
One can only assume that he and his agent Kia Joorabchian had a rather hasty chat last night and decided that openly admitting a refusal to honour the obligations of your contract and actually play when required wasn’t the best direction to sail in.
If any one of us refused to do what was asked of us in our day-to-day jobs, we wouldn’t be long in being shown the door – which is something that Mancini is clearly keen to do to Tevez. It would be nice to think that a player with such a history of disruptiveness would find difficulty in finding employment elsewhere.
Unfortunately, this is probably wishful thinking, but nevertheless it’s hard to imagine Tevez (dis)gracing the Premier League again any time soon.
Every cloud…
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