Manchester City’s Yaya Toure has recently said goodbye to his team for eight years. During his final days in the Man City, Toure, and manager, Pep Guardiola had quite the strenuous relationship. The 35-year-old has released a statement regarding Pep Guardiola’s bias towards African Players.
Toure said in a French football magazine that Guardiola has trouble picking African players which exhibited obvious discrimination and racism. He has also claimed that he is not the first player who he’s seen mistreated by Guardiola.
“Pep did everything to spoil my last season. He was cruel with me… It got to the point I asked myself if it was because of my color. I am not the first.”
“He is too intelligent to be caught. He will never admit it. But the day he picks a team with five Africans in it, I promise I will send him a cake.” The central midfielder adds.
Yaya Toure has been in and out of Manchester City in the last 2 years which only left an impression on his teammates and fans that he was going to leave last summer. Despite such criticism, Toure decided to stay throughout the rest of the season but ended up being benched by Guardiola.
He also says that he has no idea as to why Guardiola did not choose him last season since he had spectacular stats, which was just as good as his younger teammates who were chosen ahead of him. “I want to be the one who breaks the Guardiola myth. Barcelona, he did not invent it. He just had the intelligence to adapt what Cruyff set up.” Toure adds.
Maintaining eye contact was a struggle for Toure that looking at each other was just “weird” to the player. Guardiola was said to have tendencies of cornering Toure during practice. “He was spinning around me without saying anything, watching me, gauging me, but not talking,” Toure reveals.
Yaya Toure led Manchester City to victory in the 2012 and 2014 Premier League titles. He was also acting captain of the team during the team’s final match against Brighton. The 34-year-old footballer was given a mosaic of his FA Cup final victory against Stoke in 2011 final.
Manchester City refused to comment on the issue.
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