Manchester City icon Yaya Toure has reopened his feud with manager Pep Guardiola, labelling him a ‘snake’.
Foot Mercato have comments from the former Manchester City star today after he appeared on the show ‘Zack en Roue Libre’. During that show, he revisited his relationship with Guardiola, which is known to be a frosty one.
The pair worked together at both Barcelona and Manchester City. Indeed, Guardiola is believed to have been key in Toure’s arrival at Manchester City back in 2010.
He had promoted Sergio Busquets, who he worked with in the Barcelona B side, into his first team and preferred him as his holding midfielder. The feeling was that he fit the system better than Toure.
As a result, Toure’s playing time diminished significantly. In the 2009/10 season, he completed 90 minutes just nine times. That was a situation he found difficult to accept.
Toure later joined Manchester City in July 2010, going on to establish himself as a key man as City became the global force they are today. The pair then reunited at the Etihad when Guardiola move to Manchester City in 2016.
Their feud was reunited as a result, with Toure again seeing his playing time reduced. That led to significant controversy, with Toure’s agent Dimitri Seluk speaking publically against Guardiola.
He was forced to apologise for those comments but by that point Toure was no longer a key player and featured in a limited number of games across Guardiola’s tenure. He then departed in May 2018.
Toure and his agent have since made several public allegations against Guardiola, something that also happened after he left Barcelona. And the former midfielder isn’t backing down from his opinion of his former manager.
“I don’t see a man, I see a snake,” he said.
“The Barcelona coach calls me back then and says, ‘You have to come back, it’s important.’ My wife says to me, ‘Are you going to listen to that nonsense?’ He treated you like dirt, and now he wants you to stay, and you’re going to stay? Let’s go to Manchester, my brother.
“The guy didn’t play me all year, and at the end of the year, I shine at the World Cup (2010), and he brings me to Barcelona. My wife would tell me about him. ‘Sheytan, he’s not a man, he’s wicked,’ she sees him as a negative person.”