Manchester City midfield star, Yaya Toure, has spoken out with dissatisfaction about the way his comments were ‘taken out of context’ with regards to a possible move from England to Paris. Toure was quoted saying he would be honored to play for PSG and that his agent was ‘hanging on the telephone’ but he, apparently, now wants to clear up what he meant by his comments.
Talking to France Football, Toure said:
“Given the goals of Paris, how could you not be interested in a club like that? PSG have become one of the strongest teams in Europe. It would be a honour to one day play for a club like that. If I can be of service [then good].
“Given the magnificent season Manchester City have had, everyone talks about me and everything is open. My agent, Dimitry, is hanging on the telephone and he knows what he has to do, I have complete confidence in him. Nobody knows what can happen tomorrow, my attention is on the World Cup and we will see afterwards.”
Quotes from his agent, Dimitry Seluk, also reinforced the 31-year old’s comments:
“There’s a big possibility Yaya will leave this summer. Yaya is very upset. It’s not possible to buy relationships with money. And if they cannot shake the hand of Yaya, bye, bye, no problem.
“What happened at his birthday meant the club don’t care about him. It was proof.”
Seluk was referring to Toure’s discontentment over the Manchester club failing to acknowledge his 31st birthday.
The Ivory Coast man added comments about a return to Barcelona…
“Yes, I have said I would like to finish my career at Barcelona. You never know because football moves quickly, you never know.”
…which also appeared to underline an apparent desire to get away from City, but now he is being more tight-lipped and claiming the comments were misconstrued and misunderstood. He didn’t go as far as to deny them though, and even reiterated his respect for Paris Saint-Germain, when he attempted to clear the air:
“I want to take advantage of this opportunity to put things into context. It’s very important. I simply said it was nice to be a player who is quite coveted, and it would be an honor to play for PSG.
“My goal is the World Cup. The country awaits us.”
The glaring omission is that he didn’t deny the rumors of a City exit, just that he didn’t appreciate the way his quotes were used.
Toure comes off the back of a fantastic season at Manchester City, where he performed exceptionally and was the lead goal-scoring midfielder in the Premier League, with 20 goals, even outscoring the wealth of talent City have up-front including Aguero and Dzeko.
For the most part, it appears his latest comments are intended to diffuse the situation so that he can focus on the World Cup Finals, where the Ivory Coast begin their campaign on June 14th against Japan, in Recife. They also face Greece and Colombia and are heavily tipped to make it past the group stages with the very strong squad they have right now including, Wilfried Bony of Swansea, Salomon Kalou of French side Lille, Didier Ya Konan of German side Hanover, Gervinho of Italian side Roma and of course the legendary Didier Drogba, their most capped player of all time.
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