Manchester City midfielder Yaya Toure must really hate incoming manager Pep Guardiola because he is willing to pay City as much as £10m to not have to play for the former Barcelona manager.
Toure was famously sold by Guardiola when the two of them were in Spain and Toure’s agent Dimitri Seluk has repeatedly knocked Pep’s managerial skills, famously saying
“Pep is a great coach. But he has won the title at Barcelona and Bayern Munich” said Seluk.
“The truth is that my grandfather would win the title with Barcelona and Bayern Munich because they are big clubs with great players.
Toure has one year left on his £230,000-a-week wages at City, and with no new contract on the horizon for the 32-year-old, Seluk has given City an ultimation.
Either hand the midfielder a free transfer in the summer as reward for a six-year stint at the Etihad and he promises not to sign for another Premier League club.
Or see Toure use Article 17 of FIFA’s transfer regulations, also known as the Webster Ruling, to pay compensation to City for the remaining 12 months of his contract.
Toure’s wages come out to almost £12m a year, but Seluk reportedly thinks he would be able to settle for less than £10m. That’s a figure he would easily recoup through a signing-on fee with another club, especially if he heads to China where he has a £30m a year offer on the table.
According to Seluk:
“I spoke to City about a new contract and they said wait until December. I spoke to them in December and they said wait until March.
“Now they are saying Yaya must wait until the summer.
“This is unacceptable. A player like Yaya Toure should not be moving towards the last year of his contact wondering if he is going to get a new deal.
“He is 32. He has three or four years left at the top and City must tell Yaya now what they want to do.
“The best idea would be to give Yaya a three-year contact that will keep him at the club for the rest of his career. The second is to say ‘thank you’ and allow him to leave for nothing.
“Then Yaya can spend three seasons with another big club. He still believes it is his destiny to win another Champions League.
“But I will not let Yaya waste a year at City. I will not let City keep him because, in one more year, his chances of joining another big club will be smaller.”
He added: “I will go to FIFA. I will write to them and tell them that we will buy Yaya out of his contact.
“We can do this. It is an option. This is not a threat. I promise you that Yaya will leave City this summer one way or another if they don’t offer him a new contract.
“And there will be nothing that even Sheikh Mansour can do about it.”
The FIFA regulation was first used by Scottish defender in 2006 Andy Walker when he walked out on a contract with Hearts to join Wigan.
It was heralded as the end of the transfer system but, in the intervening decade, top players have been reluctant to exploit the loophole.
Seluk said: “Yaya will not join another club in the Premier League. Some people in England who claim to be close to Yaya have said this is a possibility, but they do not speak for him.
“They should only believe the words if they said said by me or by Yaya himself.
“Yaya loves City. Yaya loves Manchester. He could never play for another club in England because of that.”
Seluk feels that City should avoid an embarrassing stand-off with a player who has been instrumental in the club’s rise by allowing him to leave for nothing.
He said: “Yaya should not be offered to other clubs for a few million pounds. That isn’t how you treat a legend.
“Look at what Liverpool did with Steven Gerrard and what Manchester United did with Ryan Giggs.
“They were given contracts to stay at the clubs they loved until they had come to the end of their time at the top.
“That is now you treat great players. You don’t keep them waiting like they are nothing.
“If City don’t want Yaya then they should just say so. There are some great clubs in Europe who do want him.
“This has nothing to do with money. This is only about respect.”
