Yaya Toure
Yaya Toure

For four time winner of the coveted African Footballer of the Year, Yaya Gnegneri Toure, these appear not to be the best of times. The gurgling Ivorian midfield ace is presently at daggers drawn with his Manchester City boss, Pep Guardiola. Now in the twilight of his career, Yaya, announced yesterday his retirement from international football, but what is making the news is appears to be the unsavoury state of his stay at the Etihad side.

The crux of the bust up between Yaya and Guardiola stems from the former’s agent, the loquacious Russian Dmitri Seluk’s incessant media spats suggesting that the Manchester City manager had maligned the personality of his client since he took over at the club. He had earlier raised a storm in 2014, when he chided Manchester City for not presenting a birthday cake to Yaya Toure when he clocked 31.

Seluk believes that Guardiola has a problem with his “bloated ego”. He said: “Pep doesn’t want players with personality. He only wants players who are scared of him and will do what he says. The first thing he did when he arrived at City was to pick a fight with Yaya Toure and Joe Hart, two of his club’s biggest players. They have both been big personalities in the dressing room at City and Guardiola doesn’t like that. When you first go into someone’s house then you should treat them with respect. You don’t go into someone’s house and ask them to leave. It has to always be about Pep Guardiola, no one else.”

The widely travelled FIFA-licensed players’ manager played down on the Spanish-born tactician’s accomplishments claiming that “Pep was successful at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, but take a look behind that success. The team he took at Barca had been built by Frank Rijkaard and then he was lucky to have Lionel Messi. It was Messi who made Barca, not Pep. Luis Enrique has shown that Barca’s success was not down to Guardiola.”

But the highly decorated Manchester city boss would not have all these. He has put his foot down insisting that Toure would only return to the mainstream of the squad if he and his agent tender an apology to his teammates and the coaching crew. “I cannot accept as a coach, every manager when his player doesn’t play, going to the media to speak and speak and speak.”

Toure’s record under Guardiola has been nothing but unpalatable. The former African Footballer of the Year played just one league game and what appears to be ultimate humiliation came when his name was not listed for Manchester City’s squad for this season’s European Champions League campaign.