Setting the Premiership alight

HE is the boy from the slums who scored a £60million golden goal on Sunday.

That’s the value of Carlos Tevez’s winner at Manchester United which kept West Ham in the top flight.

It made the £5.5million the Hammers were fined for irregularities over his signing look like chicken feed.

Little wonder five Premiership clubs — including relegated Charlton and Sheffield United — are threatening to sue, saying The Hammers should be docked points for playing him.

Even less surprising is that Argentina’s latest heir to the Maradona mantle is being head-hunted by some of the world’s top clubs including Real Madrid and Liverpool for a rumoured £25m price tag.

The prospect of a courtroom battle will hold few fears for 23-year-old Tevez.

Growing up in the rough Fort Apache neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, he cowered in bed as gunshots rang out in the night.

He recalls: “I felt fear — real fear — very often. I remember lying in bed at night with my brothers and parents and hearing gunshots and screams right outside our window.

“You didn’t even think of leaving the house after dark. I wouldn’t wish that kind of childhood on anyone.

“Everything I am comes from where I am from. I left to pursue football, but I go back whenever I can.

“I’ll hang out with my mates, throw some steaks on the grill and maybe even play a little football on the streets if anybody is kicking a ball around.

“It’s who I am.”

Known as Apache, after his old neighbourhood, the stocky star is the oldest of five children raised by parents Raimundo, a bricklayer, and Adriana. Life was a struggle for the family, but Carlos’s began particularly painfully.

He has a distinctive scar from the right ear down his neck to his chest. As a ten-month-old, he pulled a kettle of boiling water over himself.

It caused third-degree burns and left him in intensive care for two months.

He later declined plastic surgery because that would have meant missing out on playground football. “I would have been out of the playground for four months,” he said. “No education and no football. I wouldn’t do it.”

The scars meant he was often teased as a youngster, but fortunately young Tevez had his football skills to fall back on.

He says: “Street soccer made me grow up. It is the greatest thing in the world, just you and your friends against the rest.”

He signed for Argentinian legends Boca Juniors before moving to Corinthians in Brazil, then controversially signing for West Ham last year in a deal shrouded in financial mystery.

He says of his success: “It is something which must be earned, it can’t be given.

“You don’t do it by trying to impress in training or trying to make friends.

“I did it humbly — head down, training normally. Little by little I started showing who I was. I knew, even in the difficult times, that eventually people would see me for who I am.”

Tevez courted controversy in his homeland when he was accused of two-timing long-time love Vanessa Mansilla.

But the couple are now back together and since the scandal he has become a dad to Florencia, born in April 2005.

He was a member of a raunchy band — Piola Vago — and sang a seedy song about wanting to whip a girl for pleasure and begging her to bed him.

Yet Tevez has been a dedicated professional since arriving in Britain.

He is a non-drinker who visits the gym most days after training.

He says: “I just don’t like the taste of alcohol. I play golf in my free time. I started in Brazil. Here I play with Teddy Sheringham and Anton Ferdinand.”

Ten weeks ago West Ham looked doomed to relegation.

But inspired by Tevez, and described by pundits as virtually a one-man team, the Hammers came back from the dead.

They won seven of their last nine games to memorably beat the drop on Sunday when his goal saw them win against Premiership champs Manchester United.

Sheffield United were relegated instead.

The Yorkshire club’s chairman, Kevin McCabe, is now planning to canvass support from fellow top-flight clubs over the possibility of a legal challenge.

He said: “I hope we will get the vast majority of clubs in the Premier League supporting our case.”

So what of the furore over his signing?

The contracts of Tevez — and compatriot Javier Mascherano, who also signed for the Hammers — were owned by Media Sports Investments, bossed by Kia Joorabchian.

West Ham broke the law by entering into a private agreement with MSI which gave Joorabchian the right to terminate the players’ contracts and sell them in the January transfer window.

The club also failed to tell the Premier League about this agreement, again breaking the rules.

The Premier League fined West Ham £5.5 million but insist they will not dock points despite the legal challenge.

There have been reports Tevez will quit the Hammers this summer. As he went off on Sunday, United fans taunted West Ham, singing: “You’ll never see him again.”

But even if the little striker never kicks another ball for the East London side, he has become part of the club’s folklore.