Yaya Toure's "completely average" Arsenal trial and missed sitter cost Gunners
He'll go down in folklore as a Premier League great - and yet Manchester City fans almost had to endure him inspiring rivals Arsenal to success were it not for one "completely average" display in 2003.
Yaya Toure spent eight years in England after signing for City for a £24million fee from Barcelona in the summer of 2010. His time eventually ended in unsavoury circumstances, from the infamous birthday cake saga to falling out publicly with Pep Guardiola, but not before he'd been pivotal to a glorious period that yielded three Premier League titles, one FA Cup, and two League Cup wins.
The Gunners meanwhile, can perhaps laud the contribution to their club of older brother Kolo, a member of the 2003/04 'invincibles’ side that created history by going through a whole season without losing a league game. And yet, his younger sibling could have been on board for that campaign and beyond, had his sole appearance in red not been so underwhelming 20 years ago today.
Having just turned 20 that summer, Yaya was handed the opportunity to impress Arsene Wenger in a pre-season friendly away to Conference side Barnet. And the Frenchman had done his homework, having monitored Toure from when he was a teenager coming through the ranks at Belgian side Beveren.
Whilst the Gunners held back the likes of Thierry Henry, there was no shortage of star power in their line-up. Gael Clichy, Lauren, Sol Campbell, Martin Keown, Ray Parlour and Edu all graced Underhill, but for the triallist himself a promising first 45 minutes became tainted by a calamitous second half moment.
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Toure, now 40, had started off in a deep lying midfield role, with Arsenal club website reporter Richard Clarke making one telling comparison. "Yaya has the build and languid touch of Patrick Vieira," he said. "The similarity was sealed by the fact that he started the afternoon in central midfield and was wearing Arsenal’s No 4 shirt.”
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Yaya Toure playing for Arsenal vs Barnet (Getty Images)But after the break he was pushed forward into a more advanced role, a tactic which looked to have paid off when Quincy Owusu-Abeyie presented Toure with a close range header he seemingly couldn't miss. He did.
“It seemed a simple job to nod the ball home, but Yaya sent his header wide,” reported Clarke. Wenger went on to describe his overall display as “completely average." However, it wasn't quite as straightforward as the manager then dismissing any potential move on the basis he fluffed his lines in front of goal.
“Yaya Toure is a top-class player,” Wenger would later observe, by which time Toure was tearing up opposition midfielders both at the Etihad and beyond. “We knew that at the time. The only problem was to fix him into a position because he can play everywhere. He can play centre-back, as a second striker, as a midfielder and for a long time we didn’t know where to play him.”
And yet, a deal was still explored. But then came two caveats which couldn't be attributed to any lack of judgement from Wenger himself: “In England, to get the players in they need to have played 75% of national games, but Yaya never did (for Ivory Coast),” he explained, with the star later debuting for the Elephants in 2004.
“We decided to wait for the passport application and then, when he was close to applying, he moved to Ukraine (Toure signed for Metalurh Donetsk). So we lost the whole chance of the deal.”
But for all the efforts of the man who revolutionised regimes at Arsenal to justify Toure slipping through his fingers, it would have been galling for Gunners fans to then witness his impact in an iconic career, that included lifting the Champions League at Barca in 2008/09.
And it all could have been so different, had he just nodded one in from a few yards out at Barnet.
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