Football
ESPN staff 7y

Boca Juniors' Carlos Tevez threatens to retire at season end

Boca Juniors striker Carlos Tevez has admitted that he is considering retirement at the end of the season.

Tevez, 32, had been pondering retirement from the game after Boca Juniors were ousted from the Copa Libertadores semifinals by Independiente del Valle this past summer, but had since decided to continue playing for the club.

Now he has said the Argentina league is a disaster and that he is considering giving up the game.

"This is tiring," he told Ole on Tuesday. "I will be talking with my family and with the people I need to talk to. Yes, I would consider retirement, but I would like to play for the rest of my life with this club. Coming into the Bombonera on Sundays is what makes me happy."

As Boca prepared to face Lanus on Wednesday in the second round of the Copa Argentina, Tevez complained that his three-match ban was unfair and blamed the media.

"I think the penalty was given to me by journalists and not the committee," he told reporters. "The journalists pushed to give me three matches, it really just should have been a slap on the wrist. So maybe it is good, maybe bad. But we saw in the next weekend that the referee was not consistent and that really bothered me."

Tevez also blamed the league and team owners for being inconsistent with the scheduling.

"The organisation is terrible. In Europe you know on what date you'll play each team for the first six months. Here you can't plan anything," he said.

Tevez also said that he hasn't performed well enough with Boca to deserve  a recall from Edgardo Bauza on the Argentina team.

"What one does in one's club is what determines whether one gets called up for the national team," Tevez said. "I hadn't been playing well until the first minutes against Belgrano."

The former Juventus forward said he felt Inter's Mauro Icardi was a good choice because "he has earned it, he has been scoring goals at Inter.

"At the end of the day the decision is up to the coach. Bauza isn't under pressure to pick one or the other. Rather he must call up the one who is the best. 

"I don't think I deserve to be there because I hadn't been playing well and I didn't know whether I would have to leave the team or not [due to three-match ban]."

In his career, Tevez has also played for three Premier League clubs, West Ham, Manchester United and Manchester City, where he scored a total of 84 goals in 202 games.

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