Corinthians unlikely to make fresh move for Carlos Tevez

Posted Saturday, October 08, 2011 by theguardian.com

Corinthians are not looking to make another move for Carlos Tevez, according to their general manager Edu.

The Brazilian club made a bid for the 27-year-old this summer after he expressed his desire to leave Manchester City, but ran out of time to complete a deal.

Since then Tevez, who played for Corinthians between 2004 and 2006 before going on strike and joining West Ham United, has made only two starts for City and was last week suspended following his alleged refusal to come on as a substitute in their Champions League defeat at Bayern Munich.

"At the moment there are no plans to try and sign him again," Edu, the former Arsenal and Brazil midfielder told the BBC. "I'm starting to think about our new squad for 2012 and I've talked to our coach [Tite] about what we need – but Tevez was not mentioned.

"We are always interested in world-class players like Carlos but you need to analyse if it's right for you at that time to try to sign him or not. We have not spoken to him or his agent."

Referring to the events in the Bayern match, Edu said: "It is very strange for me to hear that he refused to come on. Every player knows that sometimes you have to be on bench, you work for the team whether you're playing or not.

"They pay him to work for the team whether he plays or not. I was a player and I can understand that sometimes it doesn't feel good to be on the bench, but if he decided not to play that was a very bad decision."

He added: "As things stand, we have not considered going for Tevez. On Wednesday I spoke to our club president [Andrés Sánchez] to see if he wanted me to make contact and start negotiations while I'm over in Europe but he said no, it's up to you to decide.

"Of course, that could change. It's nice to be over here to see the real situation of Tevez and speak to people about him. Then we can start to decide if it's right for us to try again.

"I was talking to Manchester City in July and we tried to buy him for €40m [£36m] but the negotiations were not easy.

"We needed to arrange bank guarantees and other things. To organise all of that in two or three days [before the Brazilian transfer window closed] was very difficult. That's why we lost him."