Tevez’s tale took another twist and turn when Pardew was sacked and replaced by Alan Curbishley. With Curbishley’s arrival, the entire story shifted. At his first press conference, before he had even met any of the players, Curbishley was asked about the Argentinians. He said as far as he was concerned, this was a new start; a clean slate: “They’ve got to force their way into the side.” He was unsure if West Ham’s misfortunes were simply a case of lack of confidence leading to lack of results or bad results leading to lack of confidence. “I don’t know which comes first, but I do know either way we’ve got to get both back in here,” he announced.

By now, Mascherano was fast losing his way: playing mostly with the reserves, he was distinctly unsettled. Tevez would get off the bench more, although he rarely started. He was also becoming puzzled by a series of quotes in the tabloids that he insisted he never gave. Tracking the source proved futile – everywhere his unkind remarks appeared they were quoted as stemming from somewhere else. He became even less trusting of the media.

“There’s something going on here that goes beyond football,” Mascherano told FourFourTwo cryptically in the New Year. Both he and Tevez agreed that all they could do was get on the pitch and play. Train. And play. Train harder. Play better. But keep at it. Mascherano moved to Liverpool during the January transfer window, and so Tevez was left alone in the East End. Football has helped him and his family raise their standard of living – and as a result, Tevez has a huge respect for the game. So on the pitch, however adverse the conditions, he never stopped trying.

He was unlucky, though, and couldn’t find the goal. Curbishley was apparently surprised by the stats that showed Tevez hadn’t scored at all. But although he wasn’t scoring, Tevez’s workrate never diminished. He would delight supporters with his skills, but if he lost the ball, he would sprint with all his energy to recover it. West Ham fans became very appreciative of this, and started chanting his name. He recently told Argentinian reporters that he would sit on the bench hearing the crowd calling his name and wanted to stand up and say: “I’m here. Look: I am Carlos Tevez.”

The end of the season approached with the club actually facing relegation. Even though Tevez’s luck turned, and he started scoring, the club’s fortunes didn’t look so good. But the worse the prognosis, the more driven Tevez became. “Fighting relegation doesn’t make you less of a player,” he said when someone asked him if he felt worthy of a more successful stage. Those close to him say he really wanted to stay at West Ham; wanted to help the club; wanted to “dribble its fate”.

The final game of the season, against Manchester United at Old Trafford, provided Tevez with the perfect setting for a perfect goal. He used all the tricks he had perfected on the streets of the slums – chest, dummy, flick, one-two, side-kick (or as the Argentineans say, “pechito... amague... pared... gambeta... sombrerito... chanfle”), and netted the ball for the only goal of the game – so hauling the club away from the precipice of relegation.

“Avoiding relegation was absolutely amazing for us,” he tells us. For all the analysis his West Ham performances had elicited, Carlitos remains matter of fact when asked what prompted his reversal of fortunes in front of goal. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve done nothing different. Earlier in the season, I was missing the goal. But lately, the ball’s been going in.”

Football can withstand the most detailed scrutiny, the most passionate tactical debates, the harshest and most extreme ideologies as to what works and what doesn’t. But its magic is that it all boils down to whether or not the ball goes in. And there’s no formula.

The best of the best are those players whose passion and devotion to the ball remain constant no matter what the circumstances. Those players who enjoy playing the game so much that they pass on their enjoyment to those who watch. Those players who can combine raw talent with hard work and excel as athletes, yet always remind us of a child at play.

The way Carlitos Tevez does.