Carlos Tevez

Carlos Tevez

Team: Shanghai Shenhua
Age: 33
Position: Striker
Nationality: Argentina
Former team: Boca Juniors

The highest paid player in the world should be well known to anyone, Carlos Tevez has been a prolific striker at some of Europe’s biggest clubs.

Tevez started out at Argentine powerhouse Boca Juniors, where he got 26 goals in 76 caps for the boys from La Bombonera in his three years as a first team member.

Moving from one South American giant to another he jumped across the border to Brazil and Corinthians. In Brazil, he scored 25 times in only 38 games as he helped Corinthians to the league title in his first season in 2005 before he left halfway through the 2006 season to join Premier League side West Ham.

He made his debut against Aston Villa, coming on as a second half substitute, on September 10th 2006 but did not score for 17 games. His first goal came in a 3-4 loss to Tottenham in April 2007, a game where he also had two assists.

All in all, he scored seven times for the Hammers in his one and only season, taking the field 26 times for the claret and blue team from London, including a goal on the final day against his next team Manchester United, that secured West Ham’s place in the Premier League.

As mentioned, Manchester United came in for Tevez but since the player was owned by an agency called MSI the deal ran into trouble over who actually owned the player, MSI or West Ham. In a long and drawn-out legal battle it ended with MSI paying £2m to West Ham and the Hammers releasing Tevez from his contract so he could join Manchester United.

After a very successful 2007/08 campaign for United, where they won the Double by winning the Premier League and the Champions League, after a shootout against Chelsea they also won the Club World Cup to top that off.

They won the league again in the 2008/09 season while also taking the League Cup.

After the 08/09 season ended Tevez’s deal with United came to an end and despite great interest from United to keep him, Tevez decided to move across to the blue part of Manchester and join Manchester City and their big project.

His first season at the Etihad was a success as he received the Etihad Player of the Year and the Player’s Player of the Year awards. He scored 23 goals in 35 league games for City.

Tevez was also a part of City’s title winning squad in the 2011/12 season but was out for most of it after refusing to come on from the bench during a Champions League game against Bayern Munich and was not selected by manager Roberto Mancini for the next 22 league games as well as the City’s remaining four Champions League games.

In the summer of 2013 Tevez found himself on the move again, this time to Italian big boys Juventus.

At Juve he was a big success, he was the team’s top scorer with 21 goals in all competitions in his first season as the team took its 30th league title.

In Tevez second and final season in Italy he was once again a big contributor as he scored 20 goals in the league and Juve won their fourth Serie A title in a row. They also lost to Barcelona in the Champions League final.

Then in the summer of 2015 Tevez returned to his former club Boca Juniors, many thought it was to end his career by winning the Argentine Primera Division.

He succeeded in his first season back winning both the league and the cup and thus becoming the first ever player to win two domestic league and cup doubles in the same calendar year, Juventus had also won the Coppa Italia earlier that year.

In last year’s season Tevez and Boca failed to reclaim any of their titles and mid-way through the newly restructured Primera Divison that runs from August to May, Tevez announced his shock transfer to the Chinese Super League, becoming the highest paid player in the process. The transfer was confirmed on December 29th.

In the two games so far this season Tevez has scored once and assisted twice, both in the debut 4-0 win over Jinagsu Suning.