City named a training pitch after him, but can they still love Yaya now?
BuRIED in the latest stream of invective from Yaya Toure is a plain and inconvenient truth about his last season at Manchester City. He ran out of power. When all was said and done, his legs had gone.
His performance at the heart of the team’s midfield in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg against Bristol City in January got to the heart of it.
Toure laboured desperately, lasted 70 minutes and was replaced by Sergio aguero, who scored a 90th- minute winner to rescue the team from embarrassment. Bristol City finished the season 11th in the Championship. Toure barely featured again.
This is an outcome which befalls every player in the end and, while most accept it with good grace, grateful for what they had, Toure’s extraordinary outburst against the manager who presided over his last years is an act of narcissism.
To embellish his attack on Pep guardiola with a casually vicious claim of racism discredits those many individuals who are genuinely working to remove the scourge of discrimination from football.
The suggestion that guardiola’s team selections represent an illicit form of anti-african sentiment lacks any kind of credibility — and not only because the manager is about to pay £75million to Leicester City for Riyad Mahrez, an algeria international.
It is Toure’s suggestion that guardiola ‘stole’ his farewell from City which really drives a stake through his personal credibility.
This is a player who, less than a month ago, was being feted to the heavens. a training pitch at City’s academy has been named after him, decorated by a mosaic of his winning goal in the 2011 Fa Cup final against Stoke City.
Only the hugely loved Pablo Zabaleta has been afforded anything like the same treatment.
We are witnessing an ego talking, an individual who cannot contemplate someone else commanding centre stage.
Toure does not care for guardiola’s controlling man-management style. Yet when it comes to guardiola’s coaching — the aspect that really matters — he can’t admit it is anything less than impressive.
He might display more credibility and command more respect at moments like this if he had engaged a less intellectually challenged agent than Dimitri Seluk.
Seluk has been a malign influence on Toure ever since he took a punt on the young player in 2003.
Toure was drifting, having just experienced a cool reception on trial at arsenal, and ultimately failed to secure a British work permit.
He has somehow always felt a debt of obligation to Seluk for giving him a break.
But though the agent has fuelled a sense of victimhood in his client, it is not the whole story. Toure is 35 now — old enough to see his complaints are ridiculous. No birthday cake, not enough photographs of him on display, not enough money despite more than £200,000 a week.
Has any player cried wolf quite so much?
The irony of it all is that City had wanted to maintain lasting attachment to this individual because he, as much as any player, has taken them up to the top table during the club’s often challenging abu Dhabi decade, scoring at the critical moments.
City chairman Khaldoon al Mubarak said just two weeks ago that Toure would ‘ always have a place’ at the club. That promise looks extremely hard to keep now.