After the 33-year-old star announced he was retiring from Ivory Coast duty after a 14-year global career, City coach Pep Guardiola insisted Toure would not feature in his team unless the player apologized for remarks made by his agent, Dimitri Seluk.
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“It was so hard for me to put [Toure] out in the Champions League – so hard”, Guardiola told a news conference shortly after Toure announced his worldwide retirement.
Touré played for Guardiola at Barcelona before being sold to City in 2010.
“But after his manager spoke – from that moment Yaya is out”.
“Guardiola also needs to apologise to Joe Hart”. I live in Europe so I can say what I like and Guardiola cannot stop me.
“What do I need to apologise for?” he said. “Football is everything to me, and it gave me so much in my career that I no longer feel able to set myself new goals as a player with the Elephants of Ivory Coast”.
So Guardiola wants Toure to apologize.
Seluk added to Sky that he wants Guardiola to apologise before he himself will climb down.
Seluk said: “Guardiola wins a few games and he thinks he is king”.
Except head coach Pep Guardiola has different plans for Toure, playing him in only one game this season – the meaningless second leg of a Champions League qualifier back on August 24 – and cutting him from the active roster for the group stages.
City’s stance over preventing Toure from joining a fellow Premier League side, though, appears to have cooled recently.
Guardiola, who was Barcelona boss when Toure was sold to City in 2010, said of the player: “It was so hard for me to put him out of the Champions League, so hard”.
“OK, I will apologise to Guardiola if he will apologise to Pellegrini for what he did to him”.
The agent then suggested that Tottenham’s Mauricio Pochettino and Leicester City’s Claudio Ranieri were better managers for doing more with fewer resources.
“I can not imagine in my day when a player’s agent would go to the media and speak against Johan Cruyff”, he added.
“When Yaya went to Man City, they could only dream about the Champions League”, he said.
Ivorian star Yaya Toure quits worldwide football after a 14-year career playing for the Elephants. They have won their eight games in all competitions – a club record – and preserved their two-point advantage at the Premier League summit with a razor-sharp 4-0 win over Bournemouth on Saturday.
The Manchester City player who was immediate captain of his national team led them to their second-ever African Nations Cup title in 2015.
Despite BBC reporting interest from Inter Milan in the summer amidst the arrival of Guardiola at Eastlands, Toure stayed put with Seluk declaring that Toure would see out the remaining year of his contract.
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As a coach, I can not accept that when his player doesn’t play he goes to the media and speaks. “Maybe it’s a new era now, the new period changing, but I’m an old guy”.
