Yaya Toure is on a collision course with Manchester City over his future after supporting his agent's claim that he is unhappy – but the club are determined the Ivory Coast midfielder will not be sold.
Toure took to Twitter yesterday to agree with Dimitri Seluk after the agent claimed that his player is unhappy at the lack of proper acknowledgement afforded him by the club on the occasion of his birthday last week in Abu Dhabi.
“He got a cake but when it was Roberto Carlos’s birthday the president of Anzhi gave him a Bugatti,” Seluk told the BBC. “I don’t expect City to present Yaya with a Bugatti; we only asked that they shook his hand and said: ‘We congratulate you.’ It is the minimum they must do when it is his birthday and the squad is all together.
“I hear one newspaper has written that City congratulated him from Twitter but this is a joke. It is better they don’t put anything on Twitter if they are not saying anything to him. The club’s owners ate a 100kg cake after winning the Premier League this season but when they and the players were all together, none of them shook his hand on his birthday. It shows they don’t care about him.”
As Seluk also stated that Toure may leave City, despite having three years left on a £220,000-a-week contract (€270,000), the Ivorian’s subsequent tweets also came as an endorsement of this.
"There's a big possibility Yaya will leave this summer," Seluk told the Sun. "What happened at his birthday meant the club don't care about him. It was proof. When your best worker has his birthday from time to time it's not bad to shake his hand. To make him feel valued and appreciated. They don't give any attention to Yaya."
Toure had initially used Twitter to deny what Seluk said. He wrote: "Thanks for all the birthday messages today. Card from City just arrived ... Must have got lost in the post. Haha. Jokes aside. Please do not take words that do not come out of MY mouth seriously. Judge my commitment to @MCFC by my performances."
About turn
But less that an hour later Toure did an about turn, tweeting: "My agent was trying to make a point here on my behalf, joke aside. It seems important for me to make a statement.. i am going to do so. Everything dimitry said is true . He speaks for me. I will give an interview after world cup to explain." He later deleted his initial tweet.
City, while not wishing to inflame the situation, are calm about Toure’s future. There is no will to allow him to leave, with the three years he has signed up for placing the Premier League champions in a strong position.
There were the birthday messages of congratulation given to Toure by City on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, with 250,000-plus likes on Facebook, among the highest ever given on the page. Toure was given two cakes – a City employee tweeted a picture of one of these while in Abu Dhabi – and a video of the squad singing happy birthday to him on the plane can also be viewed on the club website. The players are also said to have sung it to him in their flight lounge.
Mubarak, meanwhile, has reacted unhappily to Uefa's punishment of the club for failing to adhere to financial fair-play rules. These include a reduction to a 21-man Champions League squad, a €60m net-transfer-spend limit, and a €60m fine – €40m is suspended dependent on certain criteria. He said: "We don't pay a penny to service any debt. For me, that is a sustainable model. However, our friends in Uefa seem to believe otherwise. They have a view, we have ours, I disagree with their views, but we are pragmatic."
Guardian Service
