Manchester City captain Carlos Tevez says he'd be in jail if not for football.
Tevez has admitted that football saved him from a destructive life in one of the poorest districts of Buenos Aires - claiming that he would almost certainly be dead, on drugs or in prison had he not ended up a professional player.
Speaking about the impoverished neighbourhood of Fuerte Apache where he grew up, Tevez told the Mail on Sunday: "I'm 100 per cent from the barrio. There's nowhere else in the world where you will find as much community.
"But if it hadn't been for football I would have ended up like many of the boys in the barrio: dead or in jail or slumped on the side of the road, drugged up.
"I don't think anyone is born to be a thief but that inequality makes these boys go out and rob. Life's not easy when you're poor. But no one talks about the vast majority of barrio residents who go to work at 6am."
