Cake For Pep?: Guardiola Answers Yaya Toure With Mahrez

Few make-up artists could have done a better job than Manchester City did at the end of Yaya Toure’s eight-year spell at the club last May.

The flowery speeches and elaborate merry-making almost made everyone believe that Toure had no qualms about leaving a club where, more than at any other he’s ever played, his legend had been carved.

And City boss Pep Guardiola?
Well, if you didn’t know better, you’d think he and Toure were best mates, even accustomed to engaging in a game of chess over tea each afternoon, and that he hadn’t wanted the midfielder out of Eastlands the very day in 2016 he stepped onto the Etihad Campus and took charge.

“Yaya Toure came here when this idea for the club started, and what we are in this moment is thanks to what this guy has done,” Guardiola gushed even as he effectively called time on Toure’s illustrious stay in the blue half of Manchester.

“We cannot forget the period from Roberto Mancini, and especially Manuel Pellegrini – Yaya was the key, key, key, key, key, key player.”

Okay, maybe Guardiola stretched the latter part of that little tribute by a yard or two, but even he couldn’t have denied the essence of Toure to all that City have accomplished in the last decade. Toure, though, was in no mood to be as generous or diplomatic — at least not until after the fanfare had died down and his days as a City player were officially over. Toure’s opinions about a man who had also managed him during an earlier life at FC Barcelona but with whom he’d rarely ever seen eye-to-eye were anything but complimentary.

“He was a hypocrite when praising me,” Toure said of Guardiola in an exclusive interview with France Football, “but I let him say what he had to say.”

“If I shed a tear when saying goodbye to the fans, it’s because of the way things broke down and because I couldn’t bear to see that guy [Guardiola] anymore.”

Just a month after his stage-managed exit, Toure came firing with perhaps the wildest shot he’s aimed yet at the Catalan throughout their long-running feud.

“When you realise that he has problems with Africans, wherever he goes, I ask myself questions. He will never admit it. But the day he will line up a team in which we find five Africans, not naturalised, I promise I will send him a cake.”

Thus Toure stopped just short of tagging Guardiola as racist, but there was little ambiguity in his plainly bitter remarks. A thorough review of the handful of Africans that have worked with Guardiola in the latter’s managerial career thus far reveals that, indeed, few have truly thrived and enjoyed life under the two-time Uefa Champions League winner, with Toure unarguably the prime example. Given the bad blood that’s existed between the Toure camp and Guardiola, though, there seemed more to this fresh attack than met the eye. Toure was vicious alright, but his target wouldn’t be moved to respond in kind – initially, at least.

“I’m not going to comment on those comments,” Guardiola told reporters at a golf competition at the PGA Catalunya de Caldes de Malavella. “I have nothing to say.”

The former Bayern Munich trainer may have backtracked a little days later when, on another platform, he described the 35-year-old’s accusations as “lies”. Still, compared to the no-holds-barred rant that was Toure’s aforementioned interview, Guardiola pretty much said nothing.

Now, though, he’s delivered a resounding reply, albeit not in so many words, with the £60 million capture of wantaway Leicester City star Riyad Mahrez this week. It’s the highest Guardiola has ever shelled out for a footballer — and, mind, this is a man who’s practically held the purse-strings at giants Barcelona, Bayern and now City.

Shy of giving Toure a loaded verbal rebuttal, this is perhaps the utmost Guardiola could do to prove he holds African footballers in high esteem, should their aptitude and attitude fit into the framework of his peculiar methods. It’s unknown to exactly which extent Mahrez would feature in a City team already bursting with the best talent money can buy and which galloped almost unchallenged to Premier League glory last season, breaking all sorts of records en route, but Guardiola certainly won’t put the one-time PFA Player of the Year to limited use if Mahrez lives up to the price tag.

No matter how that particular experiment turns out, though, Toure probably wouldn’t be bothered, so long as Mahrez is the only African in the City dressing room/starting XI and Guardiola doesn’t add to that number (at least not reaching the five-player mark set by his great Ivorian adversary). That way, Toure gets to keep his cake, right?