West Ham's Mauro Zarate: I hope the fans will love me as much as Carlos Tevez

 
Ken Dyer26 June 2015

West Ham’s new Argentine striker Mauro Zarate is hoping to be as popular with the club’s fans supporters as his countryman, Carlos Tevez.

Zarate, who has signed a three-year deal at Upton Park, was leading scorer in Argentina last season with 19 goals for his club, Velez Sarsfield.

Tevez became a huge favourite with West Ham fans during his time there and Zarate said: “Carlos is a fantastic player and a fantastic person. I don’t think I can do the same as he did, but I hope I can become as big a favourite at this club as he was.”

Zarate, 27, had a spell on loan at Birmingham in 2008 and said: “I have played with Lazio and Inter in Serie A and now I am looking forward to playing in the Premier League for a second time.”

The Argentine is also relishing the opportunity of forming a potent partnership with Andy Carroll. “I know Andy,” he said. “He is a fantastic player, a centre forward who is physical and very important for the team.”

West Ham, meanwhile, continue to show interest in giant £10million rated Anderlecht defender Cheikhou Kouyate, particularly now that Spanish club Valencia have pulled out of the running for the 24-year-old Senegalese.

Mauro Zarate launches West Ham United’s new 2014/15 away kit which goes on pre-order today online at www.officialwesthamstore.com

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in

MORE ABOUT