Shanghai: Furious Chinese football fans branded Carlos Tevez shameless and “a rat” on Wednesday after the Argentine striker described his ill-fated spell at Shanghai Shenhua as a “holiday for seven months”.
The 33-year-old struggled for form and fitness during a disastrous stint in China, where he was among the best-paid players in the world on a reported weekly salary of 730,000 euros.
He brought his Chinese nightmare to a premature end when he returned to Boca Juniors earlier this month and on Monday joked with Argentine television channel TyC Sports: “It’s fine because I was on holiday for seven months.”
That prompted an outpouring of anger on Chinese social media, with fans of a number of Chinese Super League (CSL) clubs rounding on the man often disparagingly labelled “very homesick boy” in the Asian country.
“I wonder if there is anyone more shameless than him,” wrote one on Weibo, China’s equivalent of Twitter.
Tevez missed half of Shenhua’s CSL games injured, out of form or out of shape, and when he did play he failed to justify his hefty pay cheque, scoring just four league goals.
