There is so much to admire about Carlos Tevez. Not least his ‘die for the team’ attitude or his work for charity, but now his decision to return home, to where it all began, rejecting the chance to fill his pockets elsewhere in Europe. Not many can claim to leave football’s heartland on their own terms, but Tevez can. Still in-demand and with offers on the table, he will instead embrace the adulation of Boca Juniors’ adoring fans. Kudos.
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His decision to return to Argentina has surprisingly drawn polarising opinions. Some, perhaps not fully able to grasp the extent of the emotional attachment South Americans have with their homeland, believe the striker is returning too soon, wasting his career while he is still at his best.
But then again Tevez has never been scared of controversy. Whether swapping the red of Manchester United for the blue of their City rivals or refusing to come off the bench during a Champions League match against Bayern Munich, the Argentina international has never been short of baggage. Indeed, he has even refused cosmetic surgery on the scars on his neck inflicted when he was 10 months old. Tevez, nicknamed ‘El Apache’, does not shirk away from reality.
“It was a defining experience,” said Tevez about the accident in an interview in 2011. “You either take me as I am or you don’t. I don’t change the way I am.”
It is while he remains at the height of his powers that the 31-year-old has decided that now is the right time to pack his bags and return to La Bombonera. It has been 15 years since he made his debut as a terrier-like 16-year-old for his boyhood club and rather than eventually returning as a washed-up has-been he will instead arrive able to perform at the level that caught the attentions of the rest of the world at the turn of the Millennium. You cannot fault him for that.
Boca general secretary Cesar Marucci mirrors those sentiments: “We are very happy. After much work we can secure the return of Carlos Tevez. We hope that with Carlos’s return, we can achieve the results that Boca fans are expecting. Unlike many who return to the club, he comes at full capacity.”
It could have been easy for Tevez to cash in on his remaining years in Europe and return to where it all started in a similar fashion to the likes of Pablo Aimar, Robinho, Adriano, Juan Román Riquelme have done, with their best football behind them.
The last few years at Juventus have been somewhat of a renaissance period for the striker. Only Luca Toni (42) has scored more goals in Serie A than Tevez (39) in the last two seasons. It is no surprise that Atletico Madrid and Liverpool were interested in taking the 31-year-old off the hands of Juventus this summer.
After a rollercoaster seven-year Premier League experience, it looked like he would be winding down on his career in Italy after Juventus took the troubled striker off Manchester City’s hands for just £10m in 2013. However, he leaves Europe nearer to his prolific best and with performances that were similar to those during the first two years of his City career.
No player in Serie A has made a more telling contribution than Tevez in the last two seasons. The Argentina international had a direct hand in 53 goals (39 goals and 14 assists) for Juventus in that time. Moreover, Tevez’s 20 league goals came every 129 minutes on average last season; an improvement from the campaign before, where it took him an average of 137 minutes to score and rack up a tally of 19.
In comparison he only required 124 minutes to score, on average, during his first season at City in 2009, but by the time he left - three years later - that figure was up at 219 minutes per league goal.
The 31-year-old was similarly prolific in the Champions League. Only four players – Luiz Adriano, Neymar, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo – scored more goals than Tevez (7), as Juventus made it all the way to the final in Berlin. Incredibly, age doesn’t seem to have significantly affected Tevez’s relentless work ethic. No forward player covered more ground in the Champions League last season (76.7 miles - per UEFA.com) and only five of his Juventus teammates ran more.
Admittedly, Tevez’s nine-year European adventure has come with its low moments, but having won every domestic trophy available, it is hard to argue with his decision to return home – something he has always wanted - where his face is plastered across buildings and his name is etched on walls. He is returning to Fuerte Apache - a small neighbourhood in Buenos Aires ridden with poverty - where he is hugely respected, and regarded as The People’s Player.
“I saw my first game on television when I was five or six – it was a Boca game,” said Tevez. “My hero was Maradona, of course. I want to play for Boca again one day. It’s where I grew up. I love the fans. Boca is different from everywhere else because of how I feel about the club.”
The city doesn’t just love Tevez - Tevez loves the city. Even when he was in Manchester he became so renowned for his barbeques that his local butcher would advertise top-quality Argentine beef in his shop window with notes in Spanish, just for Tevez. Even though he has spent the majority of the last decade in another continent, he still bleeds Argentina.
Footballers will find it tough looking for sympathy from fans. They are of course paid absurd amounts of money and for that have attracted unfavourable stigmas. Some are regarded ungrateful, others disconnected from reality. In most cases, it is a combination of the two.
But even now, when a striker ignores the calls and the money being thrown at him by other European clubs for the move he has dreamed about since leaving Argentina in 2004, he still manages to come in for criticism.
Not many have experienced a journey quite like the one Tevez is currently riding and not many can claim to have left Europe on their own terms. The Argentina international – currently on Copa America duty – will know that even his status won’t mean for much if he doesn’t perform in a Boca shirt, but that just isn’t in his nature. He will have his sights firmly set on wrestling the Copa Libertadores back to Buenos Aries for the first time since 2003. Ironically, the last time Tevez was in a Boca shirt.
