Midfielder Yaya Toure, who played under Josep Guardiola at Barcelona and Manchester City, continues to carry out a special campaign against the Spanish manager (“Guardiola pretends he doesn’t have problems with black players”).
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My wife always told me about Guardiola: “He’s the devil, he’s not human, he’s evil.” she thinks of him as a negative person
Yaya Toure said of Guardiola in an interview with the YouTube channel Zac: “He doesn’t look like a man, he looks like a snake…He treated me like dust.”
Yaya Toure felt alienated and isolated by Guardiola at Barcelona and Manchester City
The former Ivory Coast international felt marginalized and demoted as a player under Guardiola at both Manchester City and Barcelona.
“Then Coach Guardiola called me and said, “You have to come back, it’s important.” My wife said to me: “Do you want to hear this nonsense? He treated you like a rag and he still wants you to stay, do you want to stay too?” Let’s go to Manchester!’…The manager didn’t use me all year, but he finally took me to Barcelona when I shined at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.My wife always said, ‘He’s the devil, he’s not human, he’s evil,’ and she thinks of him as a negative person,” he recalls of Guardiola.
Yaya Toure hasn’t forgotten how he was demoted to the Barcelona bench in 2010 under Guardiola, who selected Sergio Busquets, and he only started nine games in his final season at the Camp Nou before moving to Manchester City.
Yaya Toure moved to Manchester City between 2010 and 2018 to become a ‘Civilian’ legend.
Guardiola’s bad relationship with African footballers continued at City. The Spanish manager took over in 2016 and removed Toure from the rotation.
Dimitri Selc, Yaya Toure’s agent at the time, even told BBC World Football: “Pep Guardiola only thinks about himself. He already thinks he’s a god.”
In May 2018, Yaya Toure left City to play for Olympiakos.
Yaya Toure: “I want to break the Guardiola myth”
“I want to bust the myth of Guardiola. I feel like he did everything he could to ruin his last season at Manchester City. I tried to understand why I didn’t play much. I told my fitness coaches I even quietly asked them about their stats. When I realized that they were as good or better than the younger players than me in practice and in games, I realized that it wasn’t a physical problem,” the 42-year-old former soccer player said in 2018.
“I started to think that this was all because of the color of my skin. I wasn’t the only one who asked this question. Some of the Barcelona players wondered. I don’t know why, but I feel like he was jealous. He saw me as a rival, as if I was a little overshadowed by him,” Toure said.
