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Yaya Toure's Agent Reopens Guardiola Feud With Cartoon After Man City's UCL Defeat

The agent of former Manchester City star Yaya Toure has brought his long-standing feud with Pep Guardiola back into the spotlight.
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The agent of former Manchester City star Yaya Toure has brought his long-standing feud with Pep Guardiola back into the spotlight after uploading a cartoon to Twitter mocking the Spanish manager after his team were beaten by Lyon in the Champions League.

City lost the game at the Etihad Stadium 2-1, condemning the club to a surprise fourth consecutive defeat in Europe, with outspoken agent Dimitry Seluk refusing to miss an opportunity to pile the misery on his apparent adversary.

It was Seluk's criticism of Guardiola that saw Toure, claiming his client had been humiliated by being left out of the club's Champions League squad, that resulted in the Ivorian midfielder being banished from the first team plans for the first three months of the 2016/17 season.

Guardiola insisted that Toure would not be recalled until Seluk, who often caused controversy over the player's position at the club over the years, apologised. That apology eventually came through and Toure was soon regularly involved once more.

Yet Seluk is clearly not ready to let the beef die and responded to City's defeat at the hands of Lyon with a cartoon depicting Toure as some kind of witch doctor stabbing a voodoo doll and inflicting pain on an unwitting Guardiola.

At the age of 34, Toure featured only sparingly in his final season at City and his release in the summer led Seluk to claim that the player, who celebrated his 35th birthday at the end of the campaign, would be willing to play for Manchester United or any of City's rivals for £1-per-week.

"I think a player like Yaya would be good for a club like Arsenal, Chelsea, Man United, Tottenham or Liverpool. Yaya is a winner," Seluk said at the time.

Shortly after leaving City, Toure accused Guardiola of racism, alleging that the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich coach has a 'problem with Africans', while also claiming that the boss of 'stole' his chance to bid farewell to the club by not selecting him.

"He was cruel to me. You really believe that Barcelona could have done that with [Andres] Iniesta? I have even got to ask myself if it was not because of my colour," Toure said.

Guardiola publicly responded to the accusations by saying, "It's a lie and he knows it."