City captain Carlos Tevez has vowed never to return to Manchester in an interview on Argentine television, branding the city small, wet and boring, with only two restaurants.
The homesick star came close to leaving City in the January transfer window, only to stay and help guide them to the FA Cup and a third place league finish, ensuring automatic Champions League qualification.
However, his latest outburst will have done nothing to endear him to the citizens of Manchester.
Having said on Sunday that the city was his “second home”, his latest words cast it in a rather less flattering light.
“There’s nothing to do in Manchester,” Tevez told the chat show. “There’s two restaurants and everything’s small. It rains all the time, you can’t go anywhere. There comes a moment where you say ‘where am I going to go with my family?’ and you begin to feel bad.
“Of course, one trains, plays, does things, and when the family or friends come one feels bad and you can’t take them to the movies because they don’t understand anything.
“You can buy a house in Marbella and take a vacation. I will not return to Manchester, not for vacation, not anything.”
According to Tevez, he has the blessing of City owner Sheikh Mansoor to leave the club.
LOST IN THE RAINY CITY
While Manchester is on the rainy side of the Pennines, Tevez’s home city of Buenos Aires actually has an annual rainfall of 1,242.6mm (48.92in) per year, compared to Manchester’s 810mm (31.89in) per year.
Of course, if we were being uncharitable we’d say that Tevez might enjoy Manchester more if he brushed up on his English, having lived here for five years now.
But linguistic aptitude aside, there is plenty for Carlos to do if he ventured out of his £3.7m Alderley Edge pile and made one of his trademark jinking runs into the city centre:
1. The Cornerhouse cinema hosts a month-long Spanish and Latin American film festival every year, premiering unseen gems and Spanish-language classics.
2. The Instituto Cervantes on Deansgate is the heart of Manchester’s Spanish community, with film-screenings, as well as debates, discussions and seminars on literature, linguistics, art, cinema, history and much more.
3. If there’s one thing Manchester’s not short of, it’s restaurants. Mancunian Matters would recommend Michael Caines’ restaurant in the Abode Hotel on Piccadilly or the delicious Stock on Norfolk Street (housed within the old Stock Exchange) to Carlitos. However, if Tev is looking for a flavour of home, he should have hotfooted it to Gaucho on St. Mary’s Street, which promises to capture “the true essence of Argentine life –it’s food, it’s wine, it’s culture”, or El Rincon on Deansgate, for some seriously tasty tapas.
4.As member of the band Piola Vago, who play a style of music known as Cumbia Villera, Tevez could have shaken his maracas to some latin grooves at Band On The Wall.
5. And if all of the above simply sound too strenuous, Tev could always spend 0.005% of his £200,000-a-week wages on Mancunian Matters’ weekly £10 Challenge.
