Sir Alex Ferguson explained one of the reasons why Manchester United did offer Carlos Tevez a new contract was the Argentinian’s plans to retire from football.

“Tevez told us he was only going to play for four more years,” he said. “If we had signed him on a five-year contract knowing that he was going to quit in four, there would have been no re-sale value for us.”

With Tevez desperately looking for a move away from Manchester City, a spokesperson has been quick to deny any plans of retirement. Despite living in England for five years, Tevez still can’t speak English, meaning someone has been employed to speak on his behalf.

“At no time did he discuss retiring with the Manchester United management and Mr Ferguson has not mentioned this at any time before,” a spokesman said. “In fact Carlos feels he is capable of playing for a further eight years and though he has been in the form of his life, he feels he is only going to get better in the coming years.”

It is of course understandable that the Tevez camp would want to play down retirement talk, with them looking for a club to match City’s hilarious £50m valuation. Who is going to pay stupid money for a player who plans to retire soon? However, they probably should have pulled the plug on Tevez’s prior interviews, in which he has repeatedly talked about his retirement plan.

July 27th 2008: “At various times I’ve told myself that I want to retire at 28. I will only stay in Europe for a maximum of another four years. Life is very different here from Argentina – even the restaurants close earlier. If you’re not with your family things get difficult.”

November 13th 2009: “It crosses my mind to hang up my boots if we win the World Cup. It’s complicated, there’s my family, the desire to return to Boca Juniors. I’m keen to get a bit of calm. I’ve won a lot. Football has saturated me. I’m a little tired of so much football, so much football. I want to enjoy my family a bit. “

August 13th 2010: “There is only a little time remaining before I retire. It is very difficult to play football if you are not happy. Every day I have less will to continue playing in Europe and to carry on playing football. I will be there for two or three more years and then I will think about heading back to Argentina. For the last year, I haven’t lived with my daughters. They are growing up and I’m getting worn down. After returning from South Africa, I thought about quitting football, but I have a large family and now I have to continue. Football doesn’t make me as happy or as fulfilled as before. It becomes difficult to play like this.”

October 11th 2010: “I have been playing many games this season, and my body is feeling it. I am tired. I started to play when I was really young and I have always fought so much but now I’m feeling the effort. I’m an old guy now, and I started to think about some stuff. For example, I am less tolerant as a person today than I was a few years ago. Then I think – what happens if I quit football as long as I am okay in my life? When I talk about quitting, I mean quitting football, not just the national team. But at the moment I still don’t know if this is going to be in one month, one year, three or five years. I have the idea of quitting in my mind. Maybe one of these days, I will just wake up and say no more football.”

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Carlos Tevez is a liar




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