Argentina icon Carlos Tevez has hit out at Manchester United legend Sir Alex Ferguson, insisting it was his fault that he ended up leaving for Manchester City.
Tevez originally moved to England to join West Ham in €14.6m deal from Corinthians alongside Javier Mascherano, spending a year with the Hammers before being sent on a two-year loan to Manchester United.
The Reds paid big to secure the forward’s signature, paying a €12.7m loan fee for him to get him ahead of the competition.
That proved to be money well spent as he went on to score 34 goals and assist 14 in 99 games for the club, helping them to win two Premier League titles, the Champions League and Club World Cup as well as the League Cup and Community Shield.
It had been expected Manchester United would make his move a permanent one in 2009 but that did not happen, with him instead returning to West Ham before joining the Reds rivals Manchester City in a €29m deal in July 2009.
The story was a huge one, to say the least, and only helped to fuel the rivalry in Manchester, particularly when City elected to erect a huge poster celebrating the arrival of Tevez with the tagline ‘Welcome to Manchester’.
Tevez went on to star at the Etihad too, scoring 73 goals and registering 35 assists in 148 games for the club but says he would have never left Old Trafford if it hadn’t been for Sir Alex’s treatment of him.
“As a coach he’s a phenomenon, he was at a club like United for such a long time. But I had a situation with him.
“(He told me) we’re going to buy you, but I’m going to bring Berbatov. Don’t worry, I’m going to bring him to compete with you. But we’re going to talk to your agent to agree on the contract and the transfer.
“(But) they didn’t call my agent, nothing. Time was passing. They started to want to lower my price. I was performing every time I came on and people started to shout my name. It was a year-long process of eating it up.”
According to Tevez, things then came to a head after the Champions League final in 2009, by which point he had already agreed to make the move to Manchester City.
“I had more or less agreed with the Sheikh that after the game, I would take a private plane, go with my family to Abu Dhabi to meet him and to settle the contract with City, all before the final with United,” he added.
“It was like a dagger for him (Ferguson). And for me too, because I loved United. But for me he didn’t deliver all year, he made me suffer. It hurt me a lot, because I loved United.
“I loved playing at Old Trafford, for me it was like the Bombonera, it gave me that feeling.
“Then the Sheikh came, they told me they wanted me to be the flag bearer of City, he presented me with the project of what the club is today and that’s it.”
