If, as legend has it, God loves a trier, he must adore Carlos Tévez.
My auld fella can’t get over how Fergie – possibly suspicious of South Americans and their agents after Veron, Forlan, Kleberson et al – allowed the Argentine leave Old Trafford for Man City last summer, while keeping faith in Dimitar Berbatov, a striker possibly not to the man upstairs’ liking.
With 11 goals in his last nine games, “Apache” (his kidname back in the slums of Fort Apache, Buenos Aires – “at night it was like Beirut”) has disproved the main fault a fellow ‘ManUer’ found with Tevez: an alleged failure to get his shots off quickly enough. Well what’s looking like Mark Hughes’s best buy among many is now getting his shorts off faster than Tiger Woods at a sleepover in Hugh Hefner’s. (He said shots – Ed.).
Meanwhile, £30m ‘Berba’ is about to undergo surgery on a knee he’s been carrying with his customary casualness. This will purportedly enable Michael Owen to show that Sir Alex – whose gambling in the transfer market would seem to have been arrested by the Glazers – was right to forego a fans’ favourite for a man whose instincts are more keenly observed at the racecourse than in the penalty box these days.
Footnote: If I’d euro in expenses for every time I’ve heard this question asked I’d be up there with Brendan Kenneally TD: what happened to Tevez’s face, neck and chest? Well, when he was 10 months old he accidentally poured a kettle of boiling water over himself causing third-degree burns that left him in intensive care for two months. He’s always refused to have surgery on the severe scarring, seeing it as “part of who I am.”
