TEVEZ REVEALS HIS HAUNTING PAST

THE terrible scars on his neck are a constant reminder of the life Carlos Tevez once had.

Murder, drugs, gunfire, gangsters, police sirens, dirty syringes and broken glass provided the backdrop to his tortuous upbringing in Fort Apache.

A place where it is said you can only escape with your legs in front of you - either in a coffin, or by kicking a ball.

And now, the £25million Manchester City striker's incredible journey from the poverty and destitution of a Buenos Aires ghetto to the iconic superstardom he enjoys in the Premier League is being made into a film.

Tevez recalls: "When I was a kid, I could never go out alone in the street, it was too dangerous.

"At night, it was like Beirut. We could hear guns, people shouting, crying.

"Some nights you would hear gunshots and bullets crossing through the window or the wall of your house.

"You would have to throw yourself to the floor with all your family and the next day it was back to soccer training.

"In the morning, there were often dead people on the streets on the way to school.

"I would see guys hanging around high or stoned. Their lives centred around drugs.

"Others would go out stealing. They called it easy money. They would get up with no money to go back out and steal again.

"A good friend of mine chose a different path and he is not with us any more. He died five years ago. He went out stealing and the police killed him.

"I had to decide whether to follow them or follow my dream. If you like football, give it all to football - it's the best thing that can happen to you."

Known as Carlos Martinez until he was 11, his neighbourhood was constructed after the Second World War to wipe out Argentina's illegal settlements.

Even a recent local census gives only an approximate population count because many of the residents refused to allow inspectors into their homes.

Tevez's father was a bricklayer who at times struggled to feed his family.

Showing a hunger to succeed is one thing, going hungry is quite another.

And Tevez really has known both.

If he didn't look unduly fazed by his much-hyped move across Manchester from United to City this summer, or by the controversy that surrounded him when used as an illegal player by West Ham two years ago, perhaps it is a little easier to understand why.

When you have returned home to find nothing to eat, played football in the streets for the prize of a can of Coke and skipped over dead bodies on your way to school, the red tape, bureaucracy and petty rivalries of football mean next to nothing.

Tevez recalls: "In the games I played as kids against adults, we mostly had to dribble around pieces of glass and syringes on the pitch to avoid getting diseases like tetanus, because we basically played on a rubbish tip.

"I played with four pads on my

legs - two for my shins and two for my calves.

"But the real problems were the shoes. They were so tight that in the end my toenails didn't grow any more."

The ugly scars which meander across his neck are the legacy of the third-degree burns he suffered when he accidentally poured a kettle of boiling water over himself.

Yet when his first club Boca Juniors offered to pay for surgery to have them removed, Tevez refused.

"I have the body I have and I wouldn't change it even for all the gold in the world," he insists.

"I will never do anything to my face. All these things happen because of something.

"If God put this on my face then I will not change it.

"During the early part of my life, I really thought I would have to pick up trash and resell it on the street.

"But, thankfully, football saved me. My scars are the proof of that previous life."

Now Tevez is, arguably, the most popular footballer in Argentina.

More so, even, than Lionel Messi, who is viewed more as a European footballer with a polished image who did not play professionally in his homeland.

Football fans in the South American country have always displayed a fondness for players with imperfections, like Diego Maradona.

Tevez is proof that an individual can exude personality, charm and charisma without having to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

This week thousands of City fans applied for 200 places at a LIVE4CITY signing session for the junior supporters' club at Eastlands.

He said very little in English, yet many supporters of all ages were drawn to the unique presence and mystique of their hero.

Even recently when confronted by Neil Warnock, whose Sheffield United team were relegated in the aftermath of what became known as the "Tevez Affair", the Argentine international merely stared blankly back at the brash Yorkshireman

when he said "you cost me millions, you did".

One might pity Uruguayan movie director Adriano Caetano for having to replicate the player's life in a film, called Apache, which is due to begin production early next year.

While Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole have been laughed at for attempting to make a gangster film with largely typecast actors, Tevez, who will appear in the movie, will not have to rely on fiction to make this one a success.

Even when he left home in 2001, his neighbourhood was suffering further strife as Argentina was in the grip of a severe economic crisis.

Many people in Tevez's area were forced out of even their modest homes and into makeshift cardboard cities, known as the Cartonero.

This period is covered in the film and the plot centres around two boys, Carlos and Cabanas, his best friend from childhood, who grew up together in Fort Apache and dreamed of the outside world.

They rise out of broken homes and form a close friendship which sees them beat the usual distractions and pitfalls of their unforgiving environment to enjoy success in different ways.

"I am very excited about this project," says Tevez.

"There are some scripts and scenes that I am not happy with because they don't reflect what life was like but I know we can work everything out.

"If someone says bad things to me about Fort Apache, I feel angry and frustrated, because that person has never even been to Fort Apache.

"I was happy there and I am proud about the place where I was born and grew up.

"I don't know what my life would have been if I had failed as a footballer. Maybe I would be a Cartonero right now.

"At home we played football for a Coca-Cola or for money. The nicest moments were when my friends and I won and went with that money to buy bread and cold cuts of meat to eat right there.

"In the days when we didn't have to go to the school, we played football all day.

"But we didn't have a ball, so we had to borrow one. I used to return home at 6.45pm, because I knew my father came back at 7pm and I didn't want him to punish me. One day, when I had already played in the First Division for Boca, I came back home and my parents were fighting.

"I had nothing to eat on the table.

"I called Ramon Maddoni, the coach who convinced me to move to Boca, and he said: 'Come and eat with me'.

"Later that night, when I went back home, I found a plate with eggs and rice on the table.

"My father had borrowed money and he and my mum had made me that dinner. When I saw that I started to cry."

Tevez, 25, arrived in England in 2006 when he joined West Ham alongside Javier Mascherano after playing for Boca Juniors in his homeland and then for Corinthians in Brazil.

The issue of his third-party ownership by Kia Joorabchian's investment company is thought to have put the top-four clubs off signing him, even after he impressed during the World Cup the same year.

A slow start followed at Upton Park as he struggled to adapt to the Premier League.

But by the end of the season he was credited with playing a huge part in preserving West Ham's top-flight status, even scoring the winner

against Manchester United on the last day of the season which kept the Hammers up.

He then won two Premier League titles and a Champions League winner's medal at United before moving to City for £25m this year.

Now he wants to win silverware at United's rivals.

"I don't know how to do anything besides play football," he admits. "I was born for football.

"It is very hard to be poor.

"It is so unfair that some people are rich and some people have nothing at all - that some people have many things to eat, and some people have no food.

"Today when I see homeless people pushing around trolleys, it makes me crazy because it could have been me.

"Misery and hunger, I know it and I wish it on no-one . . ."

HE terrible scars on his neck are a constant reminder of the life Carlos Tevez once had.

Murder, drugs, gunfire, gangsters, police sirens, dirty syringes and broken glass provided the backdrop to his tortuous upbringing in Fort Apache.

A place where it is said you can only escape with your legs in front of you - either in a coffin, or by kicking a ball.

And now, the £25million Manchester City striker's incredible journey from the poverty and destitution of a Buenos Aires ghetto to the iconic superstardom he enjoys in the Premier League is being made into a film.

Tevez recalls: "When I was a kid, I could never go out alone in the street, it was too dangerous.

"At night, it was like Beirut. We could hear guns, people shouting, crying.

"Some nights you would hear gunshots and bullets crossing through the window or the wall of your house.

"You would have to throw yourself to the floor with all your family and the next day it was back to soccer training.

"In the morning, there were often dead people on the streets on the way to school.

"I would see guys hanging around high or stoned. Their lives centred around drugs.

"Others would go out stealing. They called it easy money. They would get up with no money to go back out and steal again.

TEVEZ: City slicker

"A good friend of mine chose a different path and he is not with us any more. He died five years ago. He went out stealing and the police killed him.

"I had to decide whether to follow them or follow my dream. If you like football, give it all to football - it's the best thing that can happen to you."

Known as Carlos Martinez until he was 11, his neighbourhood was constructed after the Second World War to wipe out Argentina's illegal settlements.

Even a recent local census gives only an approximate population count because many of the residents refused to allow inspectors into their homes.

Tevez's father was a bricklayer who at times struggled to feed his family.

Showing a hunger to succeed is one thing, going hungry is quite another.

And Tevez really has known both.

If he didn't look unduly fazed by his much-hyped move across Manchester from United to City this summer, or by the controversy that surrounded him when used as an illegal player by West Ham two years ago, perhaps it is a little easier to understand why.

When you have returned home to find nothing to eat, played football in the streets for the prize of a can of Coke and skipped over dead bodies on your way to school, the red tape, bureaucracy and petty rivalries of football mean next to nothing.

Tevez recalls: "In the games I played as kids against adults, we mostly had to dribble around pieces of glass and syringes on the pitch to avoid getting diseases like tetanus, because we basically played on a rubbish tip.

"I played with four pads on my

legs - two for my shins and two for my calves.

"But the real problems were the shoes. They were so tight that in the end my toenails didn't grow any more."

The ugly scars which meander across his neck are the legacy of the third-degree burns he suffered when he accidentally poured a kettle of boiling water over himself.

Yet when his first club Boca Juniors offered to pay for surgery to have them removed, Tevez refused.

"I have the body I have and I wouldn't change it even for all the gold in the world," he insists.

"I will never do anything to my face. All these things happen because of something.

"If God put this on my face then I will not change it.

"During the early part of my life, I really thought I would have to pick up trash and resell it on the street.

"But, thankfully, football saved me. My scars are the proof of that previous life."

Now Tevez is, arguably, the most popular footballer in Argentina.

More so, even, than Lionel Messi, who is viewed more as a European footballer with a polished image who did not play professionally in his homeland.

Football fans in the South American country have always displayed a fondness for players with imperfections, like Diego Maradona.

Tevez is proof that an individual can exude personality, charm and charisma without having to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

This week thousands of City fans applied for 200 places at a LIVE4CITY signing session for the junior supporters' club at Eastlands.

He said very little in English, yet many supporters of all ages were drawn to the unique presence and mystique of their hero.

Even recently when confronted by Neil Warnock, whose Sheffield United team were relegated in the aftermath of what became known as the "Tevez Affair", the Argentine international merely stared blankly back at the brash Yorkshireman

when he said "you cost me millions, you did".

One might pity Uruguayan movie director Adriano Caetano for having to replicate the player's life in a film, called Apache, which is due to begin production early next year.

While Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole have been laughed at for attempting to make a gangster film with largely typecast actors, Tevez, who will appear in the movie, will not have to rely on fiction to make this one a success.

Even when he left home in 2001, his neighbourhood was suffering further strife as Argentina was in the grip of a severe economic crisis.

Many people in Tevez's area were forced out of even their modest homes and into makeshift cardboard cities, known as the Cartonero.

This period is covered in the film and the plot centres around two boys, Carlos and Cabanas, his best friend from childhood, who grew up together in Fort Apache and dreamed of the outside world.

They rise out of broken homes and form a close friendship which sees them beat the usual distractions and pitfalls of their unforgiving environment to enjoy success in different ways.

"I am very excited about this project," says Tevez.

"There are some scripts and scenes that I am not happy with because they don't reflect what life was like but I know we can work everything out.

"If someone says bad things to me about Fort Apache, I feel angry and frustrated, because that person has never even been to Fort Apache.

"I was happy there and I am proud about the place where I was born and grew up.

"I don't know what my life would have been if I had failed as a footballer. Maybe I would be a Cartonero right now.

"At home we played football for a Coca-Cola or for money. The nicest moments were when my friends and I won and went with that money to buy bread and cold cuts of meat to eat right there.

"In the days when we didn't have to go to the school, we played football all day.

"But we didn't have a ball, so we had to borrow one. I used to return home at 6.45pm, because I knew my father came back at 7pm and I didn't want him to punish me. One day, when I had already played in the First Division for Boca, I came back home and my parents were fighting.

"I had nothing to eat on the table.

"I called Ramon Maddoni, the coach who convinced me to move to Boca, and he said: 'Come and eat with me'.

"Later that night, when I went back home, I found a plate with eggs and rice on the table.

"My father had borrowed money and he and my mum had made me that dinner. When I saw that I started to cry."

Tevez, 25, arrived in England in 2006 when he joined West Ham alongside Javier Mascherano after playing for Boca Juniors in his homeland and then for Corinthians in Brazil.

The issue of his third-party ownership by Kia Joorabchian's investment company is thought to have put the top-four clubs off signing him, even after he impressed during the World Cup the same year.

A slow start followed at Upton Park as he struggled to adapt to the Premier League.

But by the end of the season he was credited with playing a huge part in preserving West Ham's top-flight status, even scoring the winner

against Manchester United on the last day of the season which kept the Hammers up.

He then won two Premier League titles and a Champions League winner's medal at United before moving to City for £25m this year.

Now he wants to win silverware at United's rivals.

"I don't know how to do anything besides play football," he admits. "I was born for football.

"It is very hard to be poor.

"It is so unfair that some people are rich and some people have nothing at all - that some people have many things to eat, and some people have no food.

"Today when I see homeless people pushing around trolleys, it makes me crazy because it could have been me.

"Misery and hunger, I know it and I wish it on no-one . . ."

HE terrible scars on his neck are a constant reminder of the life Carlos Tevez once had.

Murder, drugs, gunfire, gangsters, police sirens, dirty syringes and broken glass provided the backdrop to his tortuous upbringing in Fort Apache.

A place where it is said you can only escape with your legs in front of you - either in a coffin, or by kicking a ball.

And now, the £25million Manchester City striker's incredible journey from the poverty and destitution of a Buenos Aires ghetto to the iconic superstardom he enjoys in the Premier League is being made into a film.

Tevez recalls: "When I was a kid, I could never go out alone in the street, it was too dangerous.

"At night, it was like Beirut. We could hear guns, people shouting, crying.

"Some nights you would hear gunshots and bullets crossing through the window or the wall of your house.

"You would have to throw yourself to the floor with all your family and the next day it was back to soccer training.

"In the morning, there were often dead people on the streets on the way to school.

"I would see guys hanging around high or stoned. Their lives centred around drugs.

"Others would go out stealing. They called it easy money. They would get up with no money to go back out and steal again.

"A good friend of mine chose a different path and he is not with us any more. He died five years ago. He went out stealing and the police killed him.

"I had to decide whether to follow them or follow my dream. If you like football, give it all to football - it's the best thing that can happen to you."

Known as Carlos Martinez until he was 11, his neighbourhood was constructed after the Second World War to wipe out Argentina's illegal settlements.

Even a recent local census gives only an approximate population count because many of the residents refused to allow inspectors into their homes.

Tevez's father was a bricklayer who at times struggled to feed his family.

Showing a hunger to succeed is one thing, going hungry is quite another.

And Tevez really has known both.

If he didn't look unduly fazed by his much-hyped move across Manchester from United to City this summer, or by the controversy that surrounded him when used as an illegal player by West Ham two years ago, perhaps it is a little easier to understand why.

When you have returned home to find nothing to eat, played football in the streets for the prize of a can of Coke and skipped over dead bodies on your way to school, the red tape, bureaucracy and petty rivalries of football mean next to nothing.

Tevez recalls: "In the games I played as kids against adults, we mostly had to dribble around pieces of glass and syringes on the pitch to avoid getting diseases like tetanus, because we basically played on a rubbish tip.

"I played with four pads on my

legs - two for my shins and two for my calves.

"But the real problems were the shoes. They were so tight that in the end my toenails didn't grow any more."

The ugly scars which meander across his neck are the legacy of the third-degree burns he suffered when he accidentally poured a kettle of boiling water over himself.

Yet when his first club Boca Juniors offered to pay for surgery to have them removed, Tevez refused.

"I have the body I have and I wouldn't change it even for all the gold in the world," he insists.

"I will never do anything to my face. All these things happen because of something.

"If God put this on my face then I will not change it.

"During the early part of my life, I really thought I would have to pick up trash and resell it on the street.

"But, thankfully, football saved me. My scars are the proof of that previous life."

Now Tevez is, arguably, the most popular footballer in Argentina.

More so, even, than Lionel Messi, who is viewed more as a European footballer with a polished image who did not play professionally in his homeland.

Football fans in the South American country have always displayed a fondness for players with imperfections, like Diego Maradona.

Tevez is proof that an individual can exude personality, charm and charisma without having to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

This week thousands of City fans applied for 200 places at a LIVE4CITY signing session for the junior supporters' club at Eastlands.

He said very little in English, yet many supporters of all ages were drawn to the unique presence and mystique of their hero.

Even recently when confronted by Neil Warnock, whose Sheffield United team were relegated in the aftermath of what became known as the "Tevez Affair", the Argentine international merely stared blankly back at the brash Yorkshireman

when he said "you cost me millions, you did".

One might pity Uruguayan movie director Adriano Caetano for having to replicate the player's life in a film, called Apache, which is due to begin production early next year.

While Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole have been laughed at for attempting to make a gangster film with largely typecast actors, Tevez, who will appear in the movie, will not have to rely on fiction to make this one a success.

Even when he left home in 2001, his neighbourhood was suffering further strife as Argentina was in the grip of a severe economic crisis.

Many people in Tevez's area were forced out of even their modest homes and into makeshift cardboard cities, known as the Cartonero.

This period is covered in the film and the plot centres around two boys, Carlos and Cabanas, his best friend from childhood, who grew up together in Fort Apache and dreamed of the outside world.

They rise out of broken homes and form a close friendship which sees them beat the usual distractions and pitfalls of their unforgiving environment to enjoy success in different ways.

"I am very excited about this project," says Tevez.

"There are some scripts and scenes that I am not happy with because they don't reflect what life was like but I know we can work everything out.

"If someone says bad things to me about Fort Apache, I feel angry and frustrated, because that person has never even been to Fort Apache.

"I was happy there and I am proud about the place where I was born and grew up.

"I don't know what my life would have been if I had failed as a footballer. Maybe I would be a Cartonero right now.

"At home we played football for a Coca-Cola or for money. The nicest moments were when my friends and I won and went with that money to buy bread and cold cuts of meat to eat right there.

"In the days when we didn't have to go to the school, we played football all day.

"But we didn't have a ball, so we had to borrow one. I used to return home at 6.45pm, because I knew my father came back at 7pm and I didn't want him to punish me. One day, when I had already played in the First Division for Boca, I came back home and my parents were fighting.

"I had nothing to eat on the table.

"I called Ramon Maddoni, the coach who convinced me to move to Boca, and he said: 'Come and eat with me'.

"Later that night, when I went back home, I found a plate with eggs and rice on the table.

"My father had borrowed money and he and my mum had made me that dinner. When I saw that I started to cry."

Tevez, 25, arrived in England in 2006 when he joined West Ham alongside Javier Mascherano after playing for Boca Juniors in his homeland and then for Corinthians in Brazil.

The issue of his third-party ownership by Kia Joorabchian's investment company is thought to have put the top-four clubs off signing him, even after he impressed during the World Cup the same year.

A slow start followed at Upton Park as he struggled to adapt to the Premier League.

But by the end of the season he was credited with playing a huge part in preserving West Ham's top-flight status, even scoring the winner

against Manchester United on the last day of the season which kept the Hammers up.

He then won two Premier League titles and a Champions League winner's medal at United before moving to City for £25m this year.

Now he wants to win silverware at United's rivals.

"I don't know how to do anything besides play football," he admits. "I was born for football.

"It is very hard to be poor.

"It is so unfair that some people are rich and some people have nothing at all - that some people have many things to eat, and some people have no food.

"Today when I see homeless people pushing around trolleys, it makes me crazy because it could have been me.

"Misery and hunger, I know it and I wish it on no-one . . ."

HE terrible scars on his neck are a constant reminder of the life Carlos Tevez once had.

Murder, drugs, gunfire, gangsters, police sirens, dirty syringes and broken glass provided the backdrop to his tortuous upbringing in Fort Apache.

A place where it is said you can only escape with your legs in front of you - either in a coffin, or by kicking a ball.

And now, the £25million Manchester City striker's incredible journey from the poverty and destitution of a Buenos Aires ghetto to the iconic superstardom he enjoys in the Premier League is being made into a film.

Tevez recalls: "When I was a kid, I could never go out alone in the street, it was too dangerous.

"At night, it was like Beirut. We could hear guns, people shouting, crying.

"Some nights you would hear gunshots and bullets crossing through the window or the wall of your house.

"You would have to throw yourself to the floor with all your family and the next day it was back to soccer training.

"In the morning, there were often dead people on the streets on the way to school.

"I would see guys hanging around high or stoned. Their lives centred around drugs.

"Others would go out stealing. They called it easy money. They would get up with no money to go back out and steal again.

"A good friend of mine chose a different path and he is not with us any more. He died five years ago. He went out stealing and the police killed him.

"I had to decide whether to follow them or follow my dream. If you like football, give it all to football - it's the best thing that can happen to you."

Known as Carlos Martinez until he was 11, his neighbourhood was constructed after the Second World War to wipe out Argentina's illegal settlements.

Even a recent local census gives only an approximate population count because many of the residents refused to allow inspectors into their homes.

Tevez's father was a bricklayer who at times struggled to feed his family.

Showing a hunger to succeed is one thing, going hungry is quite another.

And Tevez really has known both.

If he didn't look unduly fazed by his much-hyped move across Manchester from United to City this summer, or by the controversy that surrounded him when used as an illegal player by West Ham two years ago, perhaps it is a little easier to understand why.

When you have returned home to find nothing to eat, played football in the streets for the prize of a can of Coke and skipped over dead bodies on your way to school, the red tape, bureaucracy and petty rivalries of football mean next to nothing.

Tevez recalls: "In the games I played as kids against adults, we mostly had to dribble around pieces of glass and syringes on the pitch to avoid getting diseases like tetanus, because we basically played on a rubbish tip.

"I played with four pads on my legs - two for my shins and two for my calves.

"But the real problems were the shoes. They were so tight that in the end my toenails didn't grow any more."

The ugly scars which meander across his neck are the legacy of the third-degree burns he suffered when he accidentally poured a kettle of boiling water over himself.

Yet when his first club Boca Juniors offered to pay for surgery to have them removed, Tevez refused.

"I have the body I have and I wouldn't change it even for all the gold in the world," he insists.

"I will never do anything to my face. All these things happen because of something.

"If God put this on my face then I will not change it.

"During the early part of my life, I really thought I would have to pick up trash and resell it on the street.

"But, thankfully, football saved me. My scars are the proof of that previous life."

Now Tevez is, arguably, the most popular footballer in Argentina.

More so, even, than Lionel Messi, who is viewed more as a European footballer with a polished image who did not play professionally in his homeland.

Football fans in the South American country have always displayed a fondness for players with imperfections, like Diego Maradona.

Tevez is proof that an individual can exude personality, charm and charisma without having to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

This week thousands of City fans applied for 200 places at a LIVE4CITY signing session for the junior supporters' club at Eastlands.

He said very little in English, yet many supporters of all ages were drawn to the unique presence and mystique of their hero.

Even recently when confronted by Neil Warnock, whose Sheffield United team were relegated in the aftermath of what became known as the "Tevez Affair", the Argentine international merely stared blankly back at the brash Yorkshireman

when he said "you cost me millions, you did".

One might pity Uruguayan movie director Adriano Caetano for having to replicate the player's life in a film, called Apache, which is due to begin production early next year.

While Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole have been laughed at for attempting to make a gangster film with largely typecast actors, Tevez, who will appear in the movie, will not have to rely on fiction to make this one a success.

Even when he left home in 2001, his neighbourhood was suffering further strife as Argentina was in the grip of a severe economic crisis.

Many people in Tevez's area were forced out of even their modest homes and into makeshift cardboard cities, known as the Cartonero.

This period is covered in the film and the plot centres around two boys, Carlos and Cabanas, his best friend from childhood, who grew up together in Fort Apache and dreamed of the outside world.

They rise out of broken homes and form a close friendship which sees them beat the usual distractions and pitfalls of their unforgiving environment to enjoy success in different ways.

"I am very excited about this project," says Tevez.

"There are some scripts and scenes that I am not happy with because they don't reflect what life was like but I know we can work everything out.

"If someone says bad things to me about Fort Apache, I feel angry and frustrated, because that person has never even been to Fort Apache.

"I was happy there and I am proud about the place where I was born and grew up.

"I don't know what my life would have been if I had failed as a footballer. Maybe I would be a Cartonero right now.

"At home we played football for a Coca-Cola or for money. The nicest moments were when my friends and I won and went with that money to buy bread and cold cuts of meat to eat right there.

"In the days when we didn't have to go to the school, we played football all day.

"But we didn't have a ball, so we had to borrow one. I used to return home at 6.45pm, because I knew my father came back at 7pm and I didn't want him to punish me. One day, when I had already played in the First Division for Boca, I came back home and my parents were fighting.

"I had nothing to eat on the table.

"I called Ramon Maddoni, the coach who convinced me to move to Boca, and he said: 'Come and eat with me'.

"Later that night, when I went back home, I found a plate with eggs and rice on the table.

"My father had borrowed money and he and my mum had made me that dinner. When I saw that I started to cry."

Tevez, 25, arrived in England in 2006 when he joined West Ham alongside Javier Mascherano after playing for Boca Juniors in his homeland and then for Corinthians in Brazil.

The issue of his third-party ownership by Kia Joorabchian's investment company is thought to have put the top-four clubs off signing him, even after he impressed during the World Cup the same year.

A slow start followed at Upton Park as he struggled to adapt to the Premier League.

But by the end of the season he was credited with playing a huge part in preserving West Ham's top-flight status, even scoring the winner

against Manchester United on the last day of the season which kept the Hammers up.

He then won two Premier League titles and a Champions League winner's medal at United before moving to City for £25m this year.

Now he wants to win silverware at United's rivals.

"I don't know how to do anything besides play football," he admits. "I was born for football.

"It is very hard to be poor.

"It is so unfair that some people are rich and some people have nothing at all - that some people have many things to eat, and some people have no food.

"Today when I see homeless people pushing around trolleys, it makes me crazy because it could have been me.

"Misery and hunger, I know it and I wish it on no-one . . ."

HE terrible scars on his neck are a constant reminder of the life Carlos Tevez once had.

Murder, drugs, gunfire, gangsters, police sirens, dirty syringes and broken glass provided the backdrop to his tortuous upbringing in Fort Apache.

A place where it is said you can only escape with your legs in front of you - either in a coffin, or by kicking a ball.

And now, the £25million Manchester City striker's incredible journey from the poverty and destitution of a Buenos Aires ghetto to the iconic superstardom he enjoys in the Premier League is being made into a film.

Tevez recalls: "When I was a kid, I could never go out alone in the street, it was too dangerous.

"At night, it was like Beirut. We could hear guns, people shouting, crying.

"Some nights you would hear gunshots and bullets crossing through the window or the wall of your house.

"You would have to throw yourself to the floor with all your family and the next day it was back to soccer training.

"In the morning, there were often dead people on the streets on the way to school.

"I would see guys hanging around high or stoned. Their lives centred around drugs.

"Others would go out stealing. They called it easy money. They would get up with no money to go back out and steal again.

"A good friend of mine chose a different path and he is not with us any more. He died five years ago. He went out stealing and the police killed him.

"I had to decide whether to follow them or follow my dream. If you like football, give it all to football - it's the best thing that can happen to you."

Known as Carlos Martinez until he was 11, his neighbourhood was constructed after the Second World War to wipe out Argentina's illegal settlements.

Even a recent local census gives only an approximate population count because many of the residents refused to allow inspectors into their homes.

Tevez's father was a bricklayer who at times struggled to feed his family.

Showing a hunger to succeed is one thing, going hungry is quite another.

And Tevez really has known both.

If he didn't look unduly fazed by his much-hyped move across Manchester from United to City this summer, or by the controversy that surrounded him when used as an illegal player by West Ham two years ago, perhaps it is a little easier to understand why.

When you have returned home to find nothing to eat, played football in the streets for the prize of a can of Coke and skipped over dead bodies on your way to school, the red tape, bureaucracy and petty rivalries of football mean next to nothing.

Tevez recalls: "In the games I played as kids against adults, we mostly had to dribble around pieces of glass and syringes on the pitch to avoid getting diseases like tetanus, because we basically played on a rubbish tip.

"I played with four pads on my

legs - two for my shins and two for my calves.

"But the real problems were the shoes. They were so tight that in the end my toenails didn't grow any more."

The ugly scars which meander across his neck are the legacy of the third-degree burns he suffered when he accidentally poured a kettle of boiling water over himself.

Yet when his first club Boca Juniors offered to pay for surgery to have them removed, Tevez refused.

"I have the body I have and I wouldn't change it even for all the gold in the world," he insists.

"I will never do anything to my face. All these things happen because of something.

"If God put this on my face then I will not change it.

"During the early part of my life, I really thought I would have to pick up trash and resell it on the street.

"But, thankfully, football saved me. My scars are the proof of that previous life."

Now Tevez is, arguably, the most popular footballer in Argentina.

More so, even, than Lionel Messi, who is viewed more as a European footballer with a polished image who did not play professionally in his homeland.

Football fans in the South American country have always displayed a fondness for players with imperfections, like Diego Maradona.

Tevez is proof that an individual can exude personality, charm and charisma without having to enjoy the sound of his own voice.

This week thousands of City fans applied for 200 places at a LIVE4CITY signing session for the junior supporters' club at Eastlands.

He said very little in English, yet many supporters of all ages were drawn to the unique presence and mystique of their hero.

Even recently when confronted by Neil Warnock, whose Sheffield United team were relegated in the aftermath of what became known as the "Tevez Affair", the Argentine international merely stared blankly back at the brash Yorkshireman

when he said "you cost me millions, you did".

One might pity Uruguayan movie director Adriano Caetano for having to replicate the player's life in a film, called Apache, which is due to begin production early next year.

While Rio Ferdinand and Ashley Cole have been laughed at for attempting to make a gangster film with largely typecast actors, Tevez, who will appear in the movie, will not have to rely on fiction to make this one a success.

Even when he left home in 2001, his neighbourhood was suffering further strife as Argentina was in the grip of a severe economic crisis.

Many people in Tevez's area were forced out of even their modest homes and into makeshift cardboard cities, known as the Cartonero.

This period is covered in the film and the plot centres around two boys, Carlos and Cabanas, his best friend from childhood, who grew up together in Fort Apache and dreamed of the outside world.

They rise out of broken homes and form a close friendship which sees them beat the usual distractions and pitfalls of their unforgiving environment to enjoy success in different ways.

"I am very excited about this project," says Tevez.

"There are some scripts and scenes that I am not happy with because they don't reflect what life was like but I know we can work everything out.

"If someone says bad things to me about Fort Apache, I feel angry and frustrated, because that person has never even been to Fort Apache.

"I was happy there and I am proud about the place where I was born and grew up.

"I don't know what my life would have been if I had failed as a footballer. Maybe I would be a Cartonero right now.

"At home we played football for a Coca-Cola or for money. The nicest moments were when my friends and I won and went with that money to buy bread and cold cuts of meat to eat right there.

"In the days when we didn't have to go to the school, we played football all day.

"But we didn't have a ball, so we had to borrow one. I used to return home at 6.45pm, because I knew my father came back at 7pm and I didn't want him to punish me. One day, when I had already played in the First Division for Boca, I came back home and my parents were fighting.

"I had nothing to eat on the table.

"I called Ramon Maddoni, the coach who convinced me to move to Boca, and he said: 'Come and eat with me'.

"Later that night, when I went back home, I found a plate with eggs and rice on the table.

WELCOME: City delight at his arrival

"My father had borrowed money and he and my mum had made me that dinner. When I saw that I started to cry."

Tevez, 25, arrived in England in 2006 when he joined West Ham alongside Javier Mascherano after playing for Boca Juniors in his homeland and then for Corinthians in Brazil.

The issue of his third-party ownership by Kia Joorabchian's investment company is thought to have put the top-four clubs off signing him, even after he impressed during the World Cup the same year.

A slow start followed at Upton Park as he struggled to adapt to the Premier League.

But by the end of the season he was credited with playing a huge part in preserving West Ham's top-flight status, even scoring the winner

against Manchester United on the last day of the season which kept the Hammers up.

He then won two Premier League titles and a Champions League winner's medal at United before moving to City for £25m this year.

Now he wants to win silverware at United's rivals.

"I don't know how to do anything besides play football," he admits. "I was born for football.

"It is very hard to be poor.

"It is so unfair that some people are rich and some people have nothing at all - that some people have many things to eat, and some people have no food.

"Today when I see homeless people pushing around trolleys, it makes me crazy because it could have been me.

"Misery and hunger, I know it and I wish it on no-one . . ."

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