"Tevez is so gritty because he comes from Fuerte Apache, the Bronx of Buenos Aires, where only the strongest survive in good health and on the right side of the law. He had to narrate the story of his life hundreds of times to the reporters he hates as much as he hates quarantines before games.

His childhood was marred with hunger and poverty. His parents Raimundo and Adriana had to be very resourceful to feed him and his four younger brothers and sisters, Diego, Miguel, Ricardo and Debora.

"Sometimes we had little to eat because my old man could not find a job as a bricklayer, but to hear 'I love you' from my parents was enough to help the hunger pass. Seeing them struggle gave me inner strength and made me what I am today."

He is himself called Apache although the red mark ("mancha") that he carries on his body is not a battle colour, rather the result of boiling water poured over him when he was ten months old.

"My mom was making tea while I crawled on the kitchen floor, waving my arms and hit the kettle handle. The kettle fell and the hot liquid spilled all over me", adding he would never undergo esthetic surgery even though the kids called him Manchado (Spotty).

As if that incident was not enough, he broke a front tooth when a girl in the nursery accidentally hit his jaw with her head. The blows did not demoralize him, in fact they made him all the more courageous against older guys on the soccer field.

"Street soccer is the greatest thing in the world. There is just you and your friends against the rest. If someone feels he has to stick a foot in your throat, he will."

When he became the first team regular, Boca pulled him and his family out of Fuerte and transferred them to a residential area of the capital.

The directors allegedly insisted on the move because knives frequently flash and guns "accidentally" fire in the area, so why risk something nasty happening to a precious asset like Tevez."