Yaya Toure should already have his bags packed in anticipation of a January move away from Manchester. His career at the Etihad is well and truly over, and it is time for him and his agent, Dimitri Seluk, to move onto to another club.
After joining from Barcelona, then managed by current City boss Pep Guardiola, in 2010, Toure shone brighter than many other players that had been seen at the Etihad. There was an aura around him; his unique power shown in bursting runs from a holding midfield role served him well in his first few seasons. The Ivorian was cemented in the club’s history by scoring the winning goal in the 2011 FA Cup final against Stoke, and he then went on to help City to a first, and second, Premier League league title and ignited a comeback in the 2014 Capital One Cup final against Sunderland.
However, the man who tore apart defences in the 2013/14 season, when Toure netted 20 league goals, has been a distant memory for some time. The veteran that presents himself on the pitch looks a mere shadow of what he used to be and Toure has struggled to adapt his game to suit his fitness. Ageing obviously has a huge impact upon footballers, but the greatest players will find a way to combat their depleting fitness by taking up a new, less active, position. Unfortunately, Toure refused to accept that he cannot play in the same role as he did three seasons ago and, as a result, has lost the support of the fans who once adored him.
Toure’s decline began immediately after the aforementioned 2013/14 season, where the Blues were crowned Premier League winners for the second time in three years and also lifted the Capital One Cup in Manuel Pellegrini’s first season in charge. A debacle involving a birthday cake – or the lack of – featured on back pages across the country and saw Toure’s agent, Seluk, become public enemy number one. It no longer seemed that Toure was at the club through fervour, but instead for the money.
The warm, appreciative reception from the fans that had become a normality to Toure turned into a strange feeling of hostility for a player regarded as a club legend. Toure’s form suffered and his reputation amongst supporters was dwindling by each passing minute. Come the end of the 2014/15 season, and fans were calling for Toure to be cut from the squad altogether, let alone the starting line-up. Despite a string of mundane performances, Toure somehow evaded the axe and remained at the centre of Pellegrini’s plans.
Seluk returned. It was all in the papers again. ‘Toure to leave City’ was the headline. A series of querulous remarks came from Seluk about how his client wasn’t being treated well enough by his employers and that he would be finding a new club in the summer transfer window. To a vast amount of City fans, this was music to their ears. However, the City hierarchy saw the situation differently and refused to let him go, with Pellegrini insistent on retaining Toure’s services. In reality, that was the exact response that Seluk had been hoping for. City were held to ransom and ended up chalking out an awful lot of money in a new-and-significantly-improved contract for Toure, earning Seluk a healthy bonus in the process.
By this point, the emotional connection between Toure and the fans had disintegrated. The demand for a new contract had seen the final piece of string holding the supporters and Toure together had been cut. Last season was dragged out. Toure’s new wage – an extortionate amount – meant that Pellegrini was scared of dropping him from the team. Each week, his level of performance sank to a new low, and that was because he did not have the backing of the fans.
The summer of 2016 came. Pep Guardiola – the man who sold Toure during his tenure at Barcelona – had been named the new City manager and that put the nail in the coffin. Toure’s City career was over. The graceful thing to do would have been to leave the club with some of his dignity intact. That way, his time at the club could have been looked back upon as a success. Guess what. Seluk got involved again. There was concrete interest from Inter Milan and a number of other clubs across the globe, but the meddling agent convinced Toure to stay at City for one more season to rake in the cash as none of the other clubs could meet his wage demands. Officially, this was said to be Toure staying to ‘fight for his place’ at the club. A place which both he and Seluk knew was non-existent. He had been booted out by Guardiola before and knew very well that the relationship was beyond repair.
With Toure’s contract ending at the end of this season, he will be forced to move on to pastures new. Remember this, though, City fans: Toure’s contribution to the club was, and is, immense. His agent has ruined his status at the club and has repossessed the title of club legend which would have been bestowed upon Toure’s name.
