Four-time African Player of the Year Yaya Touré has slammed fellow African players for what he describes as their absence of focus and lack of ambition.
Yaya Touré is in line to collect a fifth African Player of the Year award in January
Speaking to France Football, the Manchester City and Ivory Coast midfielder said: “Africans have a tendency to slack off. They are living in a world of their own. They believe they made it; they are the greatest, the strongest. But they don’t understand that there are many more hills to climb to reach the top.
“Unfortunately, many only see the bright side of this job: the easy money, the girls, the parties, the big cars and the beautiful clothes. And they give up too quickly on the idea of matching the best players. They don’t always know how to suffer.
“Many are content with little. They send money back home and are safe for the next few years. What is the point of suffering?
“I have the feeling they prohibit themselves from dreaming big with a kind of fatalistic resignation. They believe that the highest level is not for them.”
On Monday, Touré was named on a 10-man shortlist to be crowned CAF’s player of the year for a record fifth consecutive time next January. He is also Africa’s only representative on the 23-man shortlist for the 2015 Ballon d’Or.
After seeming to be on the verge of leaving City in the summer after the Manchester club’s tame capitulation to Chelsea in the Barclays Premier League, the Ivorian has once again been instrumental in their positive start to the season. He also guided the Ivory Coast – the competition’s perennial ‘nearly men’ – to the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations in a year many critics had given up on the Elephants.
He complained last year that he felt undervalued as a player because he is African, an opinion that was echoed by his City team-mate Samir Nasri. But the 32-year-old admitted that the achievements of the likes of Samuel Eto’o and Didier Drogba have made it difficult for the current generation to make an impact.
“For some time now, I have also seen that Africans are struggling to impose themselves or to exist in larger teams,” he said.
“But all this is just the fault of Didier [Drogba], Eto’o, [Michael] Essien or [Jay Jay] Okocha. And perhaps, too, a little bit of my own, without wanting to look pretentious. These players then have set the bar so high that it is very hard to come back.
“Though he sometimes seemed a little arrogant or pretentious, Samuel Eto’o, he had this hunger to show up and climb to the top.
“I’m convinced from the off that nothing is done to facilitate our path. If I was Brazilian, I think everything would have been easier for me. It’s just an observation, I really do not look for excuses. But I always had this feeling of being a bother, and it is a little disturbing.”
Who or what is holding African players back in his opinion?
“Who?” muses Touré, “Everyone, a little: the established order, observers, trainers, policy-makers. In fact, when an African has arrived at the top, he is not always received well. As if it was not necessary. As if it was not for him.”
Touré also joked in the interview about persistent rumours that he may be interested in a move to Paris Saint-Germain.
“Ah, no, no. I’ll get killed,” he said when asked about a future move to the Parisian giants.
