🤬 Manchester United's greatest villains: Carlos Tevez | OneFootball

Carlos Tevez is living proof that you can win all the Premier League titles and Champions Leagues you want, but commit the unforgivable sin of joining your club’s local rivals and lots of people are going to absolutely despise you for it.

That’s what happened when, in 2009, Tevez became the 39th player in history to play for both Manchester United and Manchester City.

But unlike the likes of Denis Law, Brian Kidd and Peter Schmeichel, it’s fair to say the Argentine will probably never be welcomed back at Old Trafford ever again.

Having rocked the football world when he and fellow countryman Javier Mascherano swapped Corinthians for West Ham in the summer of 2006, Tevez went on to score the only goal in a win away at Old Trafford on the final day of the 2006/07 season to secure the Hammers’ Premier League survival.

But it was during the summer of 2007 when it transpired that Tevez had never officially been a West Ham player and his economic rights were actually owned by Media Sport Investment (MSI) – a company headed by the player’s agent Kia Joorabchian.

In stepped Manchester United, who offered to take Tevez on a two-year loan from MSI, and on 15 August 2007 he made his Red Devils debut in a 1-1 draw with Portsmouth.

Tevez almost immediately formed a brilliant understanding with Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo and by November of his first season, Sir Alex Ferguson was already talking about turning his loan deal into a permanent transfer.

“He’ll get me 15 goals this season, and what’s more, they’ll be important goals,” Ferguson told reporters at the time.

In fact he managed 19 goals in all competitions that year as United won the Premier League title for the second time running, and Tevez also scored one of his side’s penalties in the shoot-out to beat Chelsea in the Champions League final.

The following season Tevez chipped in with another 15 goals as United won the Premier League again, but as the campaign drew to a close, there was still no sign of the club signing the striker permanently.

On 10 May 2009, he scored in a derby victory over Manchester City, prompting chants of “Fergie, Fergie sign him up!” from the Old Trafford crowd.

But despite both Ferguson and United chief executive David Gill insisting they wanted to keep him, a permanent deal was never agreed and on 20 June 2009, it was announced that Tevez would be leaving the club.

“Disappointingly, his advisors informed the club that he does not wish to continue playing for Manchester United,” read a United statement.

“The club thanks Carlos for his services over the last two seasons and wishes him good luck for the future.”

Hilariously, a separate statement released by the player’s agent at the time insisted that, contrary to rumours in the press, Tevez wouldn’t be signing for rivals Liverpool out of respect for United’s supporters.

“Carlos does not want to go to Liverpool because of their competitive nature with Manchester United. He does love the United fans very much and has a lot of respect for them,” said Joorabchian.

But there’s a reason why you will never see United’s Twitter admin tweeting an old clip of Tevez scoring for the club, or a United fan wearing an old shirt with the Argentine’s name on the back.

It’s almost like Tevez has been erased from United’s history and that’s because, on 14 July 2009, he signed a five-year contract with crosstown rivals Manchester City.

If that weren’t controversial enough on its own, his arrival in the Blue half of Manchester was greeted with a huge billboard in the city centre specifically designed to troll United.

Of course, Tevez is unlikely to have had any involvement in that billboard, but he must have known that joining City would immediately undo all the goodwill he’d built up with United’s supporters during the previous two seasons.

And when he returned to Old Trafford for the first time as a City player, he felt the full force of the home fans’ hatred with every touch of the ball, and United went on to win 4-3 courtesy of Michael Owen’s famous stoppage time winner.

Later that season the two sides met again in the semi-final of the Carling Cup and after scoring one of his two goals in the first leg, Tevez confronted United’s Gary Neville with a pointed celebration.

The gesture had been a response to Neville telling the press that Tevez wasn’t worth the £25m United wouldn’t pay to sign him permanently the previous summer, and Tevez subsequently went one step further with a radio interview back in his homeland.

“My celebration was directed at Gary Neville,” Tevez told ESPN Argentina in January 2010.

“He acted like a complete sock-sucker [boot-licker] when he said I wasn’t worth £25m, just to suck up to the manager.

“I don’t know what the hell that idiot is talking about me for. I never said anything about him.”

Tevez netted 29 goals in his first season at City and another 23 in his second, which culminated with him lifting the club’s first piece of silverware for 35 years as captain.

But by that point he had already put in two transfer requests and the following year, he very nearly sullied his reputation with both Manchester clubs when he was involved in a touchline row with City boss Roberto Mancini.

Mancini claimed Tevez refused to come on as a substitute during a Champions League clash with Bayern Munich and though Tevez strongly denied the allegation, seemingly irreparable damage had been done to the relationship between player and manager, and Tevez would spend the next six months back in Argentina playing golf.

Mancini insisted Tevez would never play for the club again but the striker eventually did make his comeback in a win over Chelsea in March 2012 and would eventually play a vital role in City’s push for the 2011/12 Premier League title.

In fact, if you want a perfect summation of Tevez’s time at the Etihad Stadium in a single video clip, it would probably be his golf swing celebration after scoring against Norwich in April 2012 – his first goal for the club since returning from exile.

Cheeky scamp.

And in one final insult to former employers United, during City’s parade through Manchester after winning the title in 2012, Tevez held up a banner which read ‘RIP Fergie’ – a reference to the fact Sir Alex had once said City would never go into a Manchester derby as favourites while he was still alive.

So there you have it. Carlos Tevez made himself an eternal enemy of Manchester United when he left to join City in 2009, and for that reason alone, he will always be a City hero.

Still, it could have been worse. He could have gone to Liverpool.