Manchester City kept focused on striker hunt by homesick Carlos Tevez
• Roque Santa Cruz believes Carlos Tevez is homesick
• Manchester City worried over his long-term future
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Daniel Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 26 October 2010 22.30 BST
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Carlos Tevez's future at Manchester City is back under scrutiny amid a growing feeling behind the scenes at the club that he is not fully enjoying life in England and is homesick for Argentina.
Tevez has admitted recently that he is "not enjoying the life of a footballer" and it is becoming increasingly clear that his City colleagues are aware of his apparent disillusionment. Roque Santa Cruz, City's Paraguayan striker, said: "He wants to be among his people, who are in Argentina. Your heart goes out to his family. His siblings and his daughters are there … when you feel that your homeland is calling you back, you could end up giving up everything to return. Still, I think he will see it out and fulfil his contract with City before returning home."
Tevez is contracted until 2014 but, if there is a desire on his part to return to Argentina, it is unlikely in the extreme that the club will wait until his deal has expired and he can leave for a free agent.
For now, however, the view from within the club is that they hope Tevez can find happiness from helping Roberto Mancini's team challenge for major honours and being in an environment where he knows he is thought of highly. With seven goals already this season, his performances have not indicated a player who does not want to be there, and Mancini made him the captain in the summer in a deliberate attempt to show him how important he is to the club.
However, Santa Cruz, speaking on the Spanish radio station Cadena Sur, believes City are still short of being in a position to harbour realistic ambitions of lifting the league trophy. "We are below the level of those who will fight for the title," he said. "Our goal must be to be among the top four. Chelsea look the strongest, the most stable. Manchester United and Arsenal have great squads and will end up fighting for the title and we will have to play for fourth, probably with Tottenham."
Santa Cruz went on to confirm that he wanted to leave City, having been marginalised under Mancini to the extent that the former Blackburn Rovers player is not even included in the club's Europa League squad list. "Unfortunately I'm not playing as I'd like. The club have invested heavily, competition for places is great and I'm working every day to try to convince the coach but I'm still not getting picked. The situation is very complicated, I wanted to think well of it, but I'm not getting the playing time to convince anybody and my priority is to leave in the January transfer market. The coach has opted for certain players and, on top of that, his system is to play with only one striker, so I have even fewer options."
Santa Cruz knows City will make bringing in a new striker in January a priority, principally to take the pressure off Tevez. The club had believed Wayne Rooney was willing to move across Manchester before his decision to sign a new five-year contract at Old Trafford last week and they will now turn their attention to trying to resurrect a move for Edin Dzeko, Wolfsburg's prolific Bosnian international.
City pulled out of a deal in the summer when Wolfsburg quoted an asking price approaching £50m the view from Eastlands being that the 24-year-old was worth closer to £30m and that the German club were being unreasonable in the negotiations because they thought – wrongly, as it turned out – that money would be no object to the men financing the richest club in English football.
