Yaya — flagship of blue half of Manchester
HE is a Colossus. He is Herculean. He is Ivorian. He is Yaya Toure.
His team is teeming with talented stars who hail from every nook and cranny where the global language of the game of billions is understood.
They are the United Nations of the football universe.
Theirs is the best squad in the most-watched league on the globe.
From those tokoloshes David Silva and Kun Aguero to man mountains Vincent Kompany and Micah Williams, workaholics Pablo Zabaleta and Alvaro Negredo, Yaya’s team is an embarrassment of riches.
You can count them from dusk to dawn.
Samir Nasri. Javi Garcia. Fernandinho. You name them, the Citizens have got them, all swimming in the oil dollars of a man whose name will take up two pages on an ID: Mansoor bin Zayed bin Sultan bin Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan. Erm, let’s just call him Sheikh Mansour.
Back to his players. Bloody hell, some among them have names resembling those of guns — Aleksandar Koralov rhymes with Makarov the pistol.
Heck they even have their own Jesus (Navas).
They are all superstars in their own right.
But at 1.88m, the colossal, the Herculean, the Ivorian, Yaya Toure towers over them.
He is the pillar of Manchester City. He is the nucleus. When Yaya is not there, City become a yoyo. His switch from Barcelona to Manchester in July of 2010 signalled the start of a transformation. No, make that reinvention.
In Catalinyo, they preferred him as a bulwark in front of the Barcelona rearguard.
In the sky-blue half of Manch- ester, that defensive fortification has reinvented into a personification of an offensive mean machine.
He bludgeoned the net 20 times, from midfield nogal — 10 more than the top goalscorer in Africa’s richest league. How about we award the Lesley Manyathela golden boot accolade at the Absa Premiership function at the Sandton Convention Centre tonight to Toure? In the spirit of African Renaissance, no?
Yaya revealed another remarkable side to his repertoire: he is a deadly dead-ball specialist. And by dead-ball I don’t mean penalties. I mean free kicks, bloody fine free kicks that make Andre Pirlo look pedestrian.
Yaya has been hot like chillies in Chilean Manuel Pellegrini’s Manchester City manual this season.
It is that form that the Ivorians, and those of us who will be cheering everything African — thanks for nothing Gordon “Bafana are improving” Igesund — will hope to see Yaya reproduce for Ivory Coast in Brazil.
May Yaya transform his club form to country in Brazil. The Elephants have a great squad. They had a forgettable tournament in South Africa in 2010.
I pray that Pele does not predict that they will go far in his homeland — we all know Pele’s predictions are apocalyptic.
Yaya Toure is the flagship of the blue half of Manchester. He is the best midfielder in England. The colossal, the Herculean, the Ivorian Yaya Toure is the best midfielder in the world today. Had his brother Kolo been the best defender in the world, this Liverpool fan would have cheered the first league title in 24 years last Sunday. Eish, moet eish ja!