Yaya Toure has been in the news this week after he reacted horrendously to being pipped to the African Player Of The Year award by the more deserving Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
The Ivorian claimed that it was "sad to see Africa react like this", somehow placing the fault of a carefully considered decision from a number of folks involved with African football on the entire continent, and in the after math of that ill-advised reaction, it seemed that his agent is looking to take the heat off of his client.
Dimitri Seluk is the man who handles Yaya's affairs, and he suggested to the Sunday Mirror that Pep Guardiola's achievements are over-rated, and implied that himself and Toure would rather not see him take the reigns at Man City:
Pep is a great coach. But he has won the title at Barcelona and Bayern Munich.
The truth is that my grandfather would win the title with Barcelona and Bayern Munich because they are big clubs with great players. I'd like to see Pep take a club that is eighth or ninth and make them champions.
I don't know what Guardiola's plans are, but - after what happened at Barcelona - of course it is a worry that when he comes Yaya will be out. I hope not and Yaya hopes not.
Pep Guardiola deemed Yaya Toure surplus to requirements at Barcelona, presumably because the midfielder's work-rate has a tendency to dip with surprising regularity. Pep requires full and total commitment from his players, and didn't see eye-to-eye with Yaya, but why did Seluk need to bring this all up again?
There is absolutely no positive from this situation, other than worrying the Man City fans that Toure will be packing his bags if they were to appoint Guardiola as their next manager.
To suggest that Guardiola is over-rated is a baffling thing for an agent to say. These are the types of opinions you keep for the pub, rather than offer to an English newspaper, but it's not the first time an agent has publicly embarrassed their client.
It comes down to bias. Of course you're going to act like the sun shines out of your player's backside, because that is essentially what you are paid to think. Perhaps most famously we saw Gareth Bale's agent come out and try to deny reports that the Welshman didn't see eye to eye with Ronaldo, by directly comparing the two and suggesting that Bale wasn't interested in being "the best underwear model in the World", poking fun at Ronaldo's extremely lucrative extra-curricular activities, which he later apologised for.
Then there was the time that Bale's agent responded to Roy Keane's criticism of the player by saying that Keane doesn't know what he is talking about and that Real Madrid need to pass him the ball more. I'd say that made training fun for Bale the next day.
Then there is Raheem Sterling's agent.
After advising his client to do a TV interview without the permission of Liverpool, which ultimately was one of the driving factors behind his departure from the club do to how terribly bad it went, he then responded to Jamie Carragher's criticism of that decision with this well thought-out rebuttal:
Carragher is a knob. Everybody knows it. Any of the criticism from current pundits or ex-Liverpool players - none of them things matter to me. It is not relevant.
Great argument.
Agents, much like the mothers who harras an U12 manager to play their son, have opinions that are biased by requirement and will only make your client embarrassed as a result.
[Sky Sports]
