Necosynthesis (Fpl876) 🇯🇲 🇯🇲 🇯🇲

Tevez is on every timeline this morning, sitting with Rio Ferdinand, finally saying out loud why he left United for City. Revenge, he calls it. Broken promises. Funny. Because the Tevez we got in Turin wasn't a man chasing revenge. He was a man who looked like he'd finally found a place that wanted him exactly as he was. Summer 2013. He arrives from City with baggage. The golf-course strike. The months in Argentina. The "attitude problem" label stapled to his forehead by every English pundit with a microphone. And Juve hand him the number 10. Del Piero's number. The shirt that had been sitting empty, waiting for someone to deserve it. Half the Curva thought it was madness. A mercenary in the most sacred shirt we had. Then he played. Not the way a number 10 is supposed to play, either. He played like a man who'd been told he wasn't wanted one too many times and decided to make that everyone else's problem. Pressing centre-backs for fun. Tracking back to his own corner flag. Arguing with referees, teammates, the grass. Scoring the kind of goals where he beats three men because passing would have been too polite. Two Scudetti. A Coppa Italia. And then that spring of 2015. Real Madrid in the semi-final. Ronaldo, Bale, Benzema, the whole galáctico circus. Juventus Stadium shaking. Tevez picks up the ball, drives at the box, Carvajal brings him down. Penalty. And there's no doubt about who takes it. He doesn't place it. He hammers it. 2-1. A month later we're in Berlin, in a Champions League final most people told us we'd never sniff again. We lost that final. You know that. But nobody walked out of that season thinking Juventus were finished. That team believed it belonged on that stage, and a lot of that belief had his face on it. Then he went home. Boca. Just like he always said he would. No drama, no revenge, no broken promise. He told us the truth the whole time. And here's the bit I keep coming back to after Genoa. Two-nil down, eighth in the table, the manager apologising to the fans. Plenty of talent on that pitch. What it didn't have was a short Argentine who took losing personally and made sure the other team felt it too. You can't buy that in a market. You can't put it on a spreadsheet. Some players carry the shirt. Tevez wore the 10 like it owed him something, then spent two years paying it back with interest. United made him promises and broke them. Juventus gave him a shirt and he kept every one. Fino alla fine. Even when the 10 wasn't supposed to fit.