Playing Games - Media Law Week Four

Having been covering the area of defamation in our media law lectures, I have been keeping an eye on the newspapers to see if I could spot any potentially defamatory statements creeping into articles. I hadn't spotted much, until today, when procrastination became inspiration.
I stumbled across this article on the BBC Sport website, whilst carrying out my daily routine of seeing what is going on in the world of my beloved football:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15455362.stm

For those who don't know, Carlos Tevez is a professional footballer who has had something of a turbulent time in England. He has played for West Ham, Manchester United and Manchester City, and there has been plenty of controversy surrounding him in his spells at these clubs (admittedly, not all of his own creation).
He currently warms the bench of Manchester City, having spent the summer insisting he was leaving, and then refusing to go anywhere. About two weeks ago now he allegedly refused to play against German giants Bayern Munich in the Champions League (prestigious European club football competition). He refutes this claim and is now looking into suing his own manager for DEFAMATION. As it was his manager, Roberto Mancini, who claimed he would not play against Bayern Munich, and there is arguably a reasonable case. As the comment came in a post match interview on the telly, this particular case would fall into libel. Spoken words may be transient, but not when Guy Mowbray (or any other post match interviewer) is pointing a microphone in your face and there's a camera present. The recording makes it permanent, and that makes it libel (as opposed to slander).
Libel requires three things - Defamation, Publication and Identification.
Identification and Publication are pretty concrete here, post match interviews are widely distributed, on TV, Radio and in Papers, so there's plenty there in the way of publication. Identification is also pretty unquestionable, Carlos Tevez the Manchester City forward is specific, and unlikely to muddle the case by defaming multiple people (not that many others by that name would be too offended by the suggestion they refused to play for Manchester City, them being evil and that).
So the point of debate here is whether or not the suggestion that Tevez refused to play for the club that pays his wages amounts to defamation.
I would suggest that it does. It definitely exposes him to hatred and contempt, the reactions of City fans to his alleged refusal to play confirming that. It also would clearly lower him in the estimation of right thinking members of society, as refusing to do the job you get paid £250 000 a week to do is pretty disgraceful.
So it satisfies the criteria, Tevez certainly has a case. That is, of course, unless Mancini can prove that his comment is true, 'on the balance of probabilities'.

All this of course is speculation, it doesn't look likely to make it to court.

In other news, I'm going to endeavour to reduce my use of parentheses.