Manchester City‘s season may well be defined by what the club decide to do with their troublesome, want-away striker Carlos Tevez in the next few days. With the Argentine now on a fortnight’s gardening leave, City chairman Khaldoon Al-Mubarak and chief executive John MacBeath will now meet with Roberto Mancini to discuss the next step in their treatment of the former captain.
Mancini’s stance is clear: he wants Tevez gone. ADaily Mail article published online in the early hours of this morning claimed that in the dressing room following City’s defeat on Tuesday, Mancini told Tevez to “go back to Argentina [and] don’t ever come back”. It is known that his senior coaching staff, assistant Brian Kidd and tactical coach David Platt, were just as exasperated with Tevez as the Italian. Club lawyers have been instructed to examine the striker’s contract to see if he can be taken to court for breaching it.
Away from the high emotions of the immediate fallout from Tevez’ petulance, though, City must tread carefully when taking their ultimate decision over where club and player go from here. The post-match phone-in on BBC Five Live suggested there were no Manchester City supporters who had any sympathy for Tevez, and you would probably be hard-pressed to find one. The club are understood to be equally angry with his behaviour – at all levels. But they must consider the financial and footballing consequences of banishing him altogether before taking action.
Tevez deserves no sympathy from the club, that much is clear. Not just because of his actions in the Allianz Arena, but what followed: on the plan on the way home he berated a City press officer (demanding, surely with tongue in cheek, that she show him “respect”), declined to travel from the airport back to City’s training ground with the rest of the squad, then issued an apology to the club’s fans the following morning without addressing it to his club, manager or teammates. If this is Tevez’ idea of forcing an exit from the Etihad Stadium, he is probably going the right way about it.
That said, there are considerations City must take into account before they dismiss the striker. Financially, the club now stands to make a huge loss on a man whose services they acquired in 2009 for a reported £40 million, and whose current wage packet is in the region of £1 million a month.