Another excellent article by Martin Samuel.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2044425/Carlos-Tevez-toast-Martin-Samuel.html
Trust your Basic Instinct... Tevez is toast
‘I saw this movie called Basic Instinct. Bill’s quick capsule review: piece of s***. End of story, by the way. Don’t get caught up in that fevered hype phoney debate. You’re just confused; you’ve forgotten how to judge correctly. Take a deep breath, look at it again. “Oh it’s a piece of s***!” Exactly. That’s all it is.’ — Bill Hicks, Revelations, 1993.
And so it is with the Carlos Tevez controversy. You can get caught up in the chattering, the reckoning, the backlash against the backlash; you can consider the legal practicalities, the opinions of Paul Scholes, or the hissy fit thrown by a young member of the Mancini family, or you can put all that in a file marked ‘irrelevancies’ and, as Hicks advised, just make the judgment call. There you go. He’s wrong. He’s toast. Tevez is finished at Manchester City. There really is nothing more to it.
Take the case of Filippo Mancini and his refusal to play as a late substitute for Manchester City’s reserve team against Liverpool on August 10. Good story, I can see that. Lovely timing. And it is a mild embarrassment to his father Roberto, of course, because it means that even under his own roof the Manchester City manager cannot guarantee complete professionalism.
Yet Filippo is 20 and was a non-contract player, unpaid, in a non-competitive fixture. His may have been an unimpressive prima donna strop, and it probably ended any chance of getting a place in City’s elite development squad, but it bears scant comparison to the allegation that Tevez, the highest earner at the club, would not go on away at Bayern Munich, in the biggest match of the season so far.
Filippo is a narky kid, perhaps smarting that his younger brother Andrea had been introduced to the game earlier. Until the tale of his little tantrum was unearthed, however, few even knew Mancini’s offspring were around the club. They were of no importance as employees.
Scholes, by contrast, was less than two weeks from his 27th birthday and a four-time title winner when he had his moment of rebellion. Left out of the starting line-up at Liverpool on November 4, 2001, and only brought on with 13 minutes to go — Manchester United were already losing 3-1, the final score — he was then included in the team to play a Carling Cup tie at Arsenal the following night.
Scholes, the only significantly experienced first-choice player in a squad of kids, felt slighted and refused. He almost immediately regretted his decision, apologised to his manager Sir Alex Ferguson and was fined one week’s wages.
The international break then intervened and when Manchester United next played after the Arsenal game, 12 days had passed and Scholes was included in the starting XI at home to Leicester City.
It would be ridiculous to start rationalising refusing to play at all against refusing to come on as a substitute — for the record, Scholes thinks his insolence was worse — but one conclusion is plain. Scholes’s general behaviour at Manchester United was nothing like that of Tevez at Manchester City.
Ferguson knew he did not have a mutineer on his hands, merely an angry player, bristling at what he saw as an unnecessary humiliation. Even that reaction he quickly lamented and tried to make amends as soon as possible. He had no previous and Ferguson did not greatly fear a repeat. He administered a fine and a stern word and the pair moved on; none of this finds parallel in the Tevez case.
This is a player who is at loggerheads with Mancini and has been for some time; his behaviour is disruptive and often appears to bear little regard for the good of the team. His stubborn contempt on the touchline in Munich was no momentary unravelling of an otherwise faithful servant.
Ferguson says that he stopped receiving bids for Scholes from early in his career because every prospective suitor knew he would never leave United.
Meanwhile, anarcho-punk squatters put down more permanent roots at a home than Tevez. Of course, there are also legal arguments which, as time cools the initial fervour, are of great appeal to the pragmatists.
Manchester City’s insistence on conducting a thorough disciplinary procedure, capable of standing up to legal inspection, leads to all manner of rationalisations.
A player who says he did not hear Tevez refuse to play amid the noise of the stadium, however, is very different to one who states Mancini’s version of events is false. Nobody has yet come forward to say the manager lied and lip readers viewing footage from the bench seem to confirm his version of events.
Plus, the story was initially broken by Geoff Shreeves, Sky’s very professional touchline reporter, who is not much given to interrupting match coverage with wild accusations plucked from thin air.
City only need a watertight case if the plot is to sack Tevez. It is not. Why give him the personal bonanza of a free transfer? It would appear City’s plan is to sell him in the January transfer window, for a reduced fee obviously as he is most certainly damaged goods, and until then not pick him.
To stop this becoming an illegal restraint of trade, City must only prove that Tevez is excluded for technical reasons, not malice, and if they keep winning 4-0 away from home without him, as they did on Saturday, that should not be hard. The decision of Argentina manager Alejandro Sabella to leave Tevez out of the squad for the World Cup qualifying games with Chile and Venezuela on October 7 and 11, saying he is not match fit, should also count in their favour.
Those who take perverse delight in the cynicism of modern football believe clubs will be queueing around the block to sign Tevez, just as they were for Emmanuel Adebayor, who also clashed with Mancini.
Yet where is Adebayor now? Manchester City. He may play for Tottenham Hotspur but they have not signed him, and neither did Real Madrid. Adebayor sat in the shop window like a lonely puppy waiting for Jose Mourinho to take him home all summer, but he ended up as a last-minute loan for Harry Redknapp.
That way, if he starts to act up, he goes back. He has transgressed once too often, is now regarded as prohibitively high maintenance and Tevez may find his status to be little different.
Those saying they would love to have Tevez, like the management at Newcastle United and West Ham United, cannot afford him, and the biggest clubs had all summer to buy him and did not.
They know, you see. They have made their judgment calls and reached the same damning conclusion.
Ignore the phoney baloney debate, folks. Your basic instincts are right.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2044425/Carlos-Tevez-toast-Martin-Samuel.html