Given the exception he took to not being provided with a birthday cake on his special day, poor Yaya Toure has slowly forged a reputation as someone who needs to be handled with kid gloves, a loving embrace and possibly a lollipop…an emotional creature if you will.
Speaking in a interview with L’Equipe, a conversation that seemed just a nightmare to sit through, Toure commented on his struggles:
Everyone thinks I am happy: I have won titles, lots of money, but no, I am not happy.
When things are said positively, that interests me a lot. But here in England it is not the case. In these last weeks, the journalists have spoken about a new departure for me. But what new departure?
I have just finished a season with City where we came second in the league. I scored 12 goals despite the fact I had to leave the club to join my national team, who were playing in the African Nations Cup. I was out for nearly two months and I am reproached for not scoring as many goals as last season.
Last season I scored 26 goals, 20 in the Premier League, and nobody mentioned it.
When I arrived at City, I heard a lot of people say here that I was going to kill football. A lot of people, idiots I have to say, mocked me. And did you see what happened next?
We won nearly everything. I did it, we did it, because I was not all alone of course, but nobody picked up on it again. In fact, it is recognition that I do not have that hurts me.
When people attack you, you should not respond because, for the most part, they understand nothing.
Thankfully, my record and my statistics speak for me.
It’s not just City he gripes with, it seems the Ivorian has his issues with a lack of gratitude payed to him at international level;
I love my country. If that was not the case, if I was spiteful, I would have said ‘I quit’.
But it is my country and even if I am the player who is the most insulted in this country, even if I am everybody’s laughing stock, I cannot abandon it.
Wow, he really pays attention to those Negative Nelly’s. He’ll do well to remember the wave of superlatives that have been thrown at him in seasons past as well.
Not all bad, at the grand old age of 32, Toure can look forward to the quietness of retirement in a matter of a few years.
He might even cheer up a little.