Pep Guardiola was jealous of me, wanted revenge and played mind games - Yaya Toure

Yaya Toure had serious discussion  out at Pep Guardiola, accusing him of being jealous of the former Manchester City midfielder and wanting revenge on him in his final season at the club.

The Ivory Coast legend told France Football that the manager’s coaching image is “a myth”.

He went further, claiming Guardiola attempted to “spoil” his final season with the Premier League champions.

Guardiola gave Toure his final appearance for City and the 35-year-old was allowed to thank the crowd with a speech. He had been brought back into the side after falling out with Guardiola previously, and after his agent had criticised the club for failing to wish him happy birthday.

Yaya Toure accused Guardiola of recruiting players who would show deference to him:

“Pep likes to dominate and wants to have obedient players who lick his hands. I do not like this kind of relationship. I respect my coach, but I am not his thing,” Toure is quoted as saying.

“Like all players, I have bickered with my coaches. But at a certain point, men who do not understand each other reconcile. This is not possible with Pep, who is very rigid. The other players will never admit it publicly, but some have already told me that they ended up hating him. Because he manipulates and plays a lot with your head.”

oure spoke of his hopes when Guardiola arrived, and said that the Catalan had indicated he would be an important figure in the transfer window, but quickly felt the situation had changed:

Touré added: “When he arrived at City, he told me right away that he needed me to coach the youth.

“Even if I had some options to leave, I thought that I would be able to enter the legend of the Citizens. The same thing last summer when he asked me to stay. Maybe he was afraid of losing control of the dressing room if I left because he knew what I was representing for the group? But after the transfer window closed, I saw that I was removed from the team.”

Toure said he believed that his treatment at the hands of Guardiola was motivated by the City boss’s desire for revenge, and also due to jealousy over their positions at the club:

“I think I was dealing with someone who just wanted revenge on me,” said Toure.

“I do not know why, but I have the impression that he was jealous of me, that he took me for a rival. There you have it. We always looked at each other weirdly.

“He was spinning around me without saying anything, watching me, gauging me, but not talking to me. Yet he knows that I speak Catalan, Spanish and English. It should be enough to communicate both. But apparently no … Every time we passed each other, he seemed embarrassed. As if I made him a little self-conscious. As if, also, he had understood that I knew him perfectly.”
Toure went on to say that he wanted to criticise the “myth” that surrounds Guardiola, given his reputation as one of the best in the game. Toure said that Guardiola requires more resources to succeed than other managers would need, saying Real Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane is a “bigger” coach.

“As someone proud, he wants to succeed with his players, those he has chosen and not those who have been chosen by others. This is his project. And woe to him who does not belong to it.

“Actually, I want to be the one who breaks the Guardiola myth a bit. Barcelona, he did not invent it. 

He just had the intelligence to adapt what (Johan) Cruyff had set up.

“Then, at Bayern and City, he tried to reproduce the same patterns but with this requirement: working with ‘his’ players and with almost unlimited means. It would not work at Crystal Palace or Watford.

“For me, Zidane is bigger because he has fewer requirements and shows great respect for all his players. Pep, he wants to be considered a genius. He loves it. But there is a lot of comedy behind all this, it’s a bit of anything. He creates a character. When I see him scratching his head in full match to show that he thinks thoroughly, it makes me laugh. It’s comedy.”