Carlos Tevez

About Carlos Tevez

Three separate spells at Boca Juniors frame the career of Carlos Tevez, and between the first and the last he played in Brazil, England, Italy and China. Born in February 1984 and raised in Fuerte Apache, the tough housing estate on the western edge of Buenos Aires that gave him his nickname, "El Apache", he made his debut for Boca in 2001. Short, stocky and ferocious, he played every match as if it were a street game he refused to lose.

The first Boca spell, from 2001 to 2004, made him a hero in La Boca. He was part of the side that won the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup in 2003, and he became the symbol of a club that prizes grit as much as talent. In 2004 he crossed the border to join Corinthians in São Paulo, an unusual move for an Argentine idol, and won over a demanding Brazilian crowd by leading the team to the 2005 national title.

England came next, and the story there is full of twists. He arrived at West Ham in 2006 in a complicated deal and, after a difficult start, almost single-handedly kept the club in the Premier League in 2007, finishing the season with the winning goal at Old Trafford on the final day. That same summer he moved to Manchester United, where in two seasons he won the Premier League and the 2008 Champions League as part of a celebrated attacking trio.

Then he crossed the city. In 2009 he signed for Manchester City, a club that had just been transformed by new ownership, and the move made him a target for United supporters for years. At City he was captain for a period and a central figure as the club won the FA Cup in 2011 and its first league title in over four decades in 2012, though his time there also included a public dispute with the club that kept him away from the team for months.

Juventus offered a fresh start in 2013. In two seasons in Turin he was one of the leading forwards in Serie A, won the league twice and helped Juventus reach the Champions League final in 2015. Then, at the peak of his late form, he went home.

The return to Boca in 2015 was followed by a lucrative spell with Shanghai Shenhua in China in 2017, a period he never pretended to enjoy, and a third and final stint at Boca from 2018 to 2021. That last spell, in which he won more domestic titles, confirmed what Boca fans had always believed: wherever he played, Tevez belonged to La Bombonera.

The map of his career is wide, nine stops on four continents, but the thread through it is consistent. He was a forward who pressed, fought and scored, and whose effort was never in question.