Will we ever learn enough about Toure?

[Adam]

Times Link

I can't wait for Ibrahim, and Yaya. Future brotherly spine? Well, it's nice to think so. We can be sure that they will be given an oppurtunity at Arsenal. I wouldn't mind seeing the other Ivorian Toure mentions - Didier Drogba here too, as well as Tunisian Hatem Trabelsi (enough eh?)

 

[OoDy]

Adam,
Can you please cut and paste the whole article?

 

[Adam]

Not done in usual circumstance, but as for users outside of the UK would have to register - enjoy, here it is:

March 28, 2004

The big interview: Kolo Toure
Arsenal’s energetic central defender tells Jonathan Northcroft about his three Fs: family, football and faith


A picture can be worth a thousand words and yet still not tell the full story. One photograph came to define Arsenal’s last meeting with Manchester United: Martin Keown towering above a broken Ruud van Nistelrooy, gloating over the Dutchman’s last-minute penalty miss. Keown’s contorted features represented for every newspaper the occasion’s cocktail of goading and hate.
Yet not every player took part, though eight were subsequently disciplined by the Football Association. Kolo Toure is the son of an army officer, but he is not keen on war. As other players went for each another during a full-time fracas, Toure tried to calm things down. “I was shouting, ‘It’s only a game. You have to bring people joy. You don’t want to make people cry. Footballers must only fight for the ball.



As players, we must show good spirit. We are artists’. ” Did people listen? “Not at that moment.” Toure smiles at his own expense, then laughs.



LEE DIXON remembers Toure’s Arsenal entrance. The young African arrived at the club’s London Colney training ground for a trial on a drab day in February 2002. “None of us had heard of him,” Dixon says. “He breezed into the dressing room and lit up the place with his enormous smile.”

Today, if Patrick Vieira is the emblem of Highbury’s history-making team and Thierry Henry its badge of excellence, Toure is where Arsène Wenger has most boldly left his stamp. Young (Toure turned 23 last week), cheap (he cost a down payment of £325,000) and plucked from a place (ASEC Mimosas in the Ivory Coast) where only the knowledgable would look, all the manager’s arts in the transfer market are conveyed by this player.

Wenger’s ability to improve footballers is also demonstrated in Toure. A year ago he was no more than a raw utility player, as much prone to accident as excellence. In only his fifth League start, Toure miskicked into his own goal against Aston Villa, costing Arsenal two precious points. Now he is “one of the first five or six names” Wenger puts on his team sheet (only Henry and Robert Pires have made more appearances this season) . He has a regular role in central defence, where he is excelling. It is a mark of his progress that, when asked about the groin problem that might keep Sol Campbell out today, Wenger can say consolingly: “But we still have Kolo.”

The midweek European Cup League meeting with Chelsea demonstrated Toure’s importance to the team’s backline. There was Adrian Mutu in a dangerous position. Toure hooked an athletic leg round the Romanian to intercept. Here was Damien Duff bearing towards the box, feinting one way, then the other. Toure, quick as a mirror image, followed each movement so that Duff had to lay the ball off. Then, most crucially, there was Eidur Gudjohnsen, with Chelsea 1-0 up and three colleagues waiting to score inside the six-yard box. Toure, like a fork of red and white lightning, dived in to block his cross.

The most important moment of the game? “Not really,” says Toure modestly. “For the whole 90 minutes you’ve got to be concentrated and ensure you’re well positioned. Sometimes you’re rewarded. I loved the Chelsea game. I think we’re lucky, as footballers, to be involved in games like that. Chelsea fought really well and the atmosphere inside their stadium was fantastic. But we responded. The score was nice for us. We have the spirit at Arsenal and we’re really focused. If we are concentrated, nobody can beat us.”

Nobody has, in the Premiership, since Leeds on May 4, 2003. Today Manchester United stand between Arsenal and the longest unbeaten start to a top division campaign. “They will be difficult. United are a great team,” says Toure. “I can’t say anything about them — I’m 23 and need to worry about my own game. If you’d told me as a kid I’d be involved in a match like this one day I’d have said you’re joking.”

Toure does a lot of joking. As we talk in the training ground canteen, his laughter is a regular interruption. Another is the way he stops to wave and wink at people as they cross the room. His friendliness is legendary. After lunch, he often seeks out the chef to offer thanks. The dining hall is airy, spacious and relaxing, and Toure is sometimes the last person to leave. “I like the calm.” That is not in vast supply in the Ivory Coast right now. A 14-month peace accord has broken down and the country is threatened by renewed civil war. Central Abidjan, where Toure’s family are, is protected by armoured vehicles. Helicopter gunships patrol the sky.

“It’s a difficult situation, but my family are in the middle of Abidjan and that’s the safest place because French peacekeepers and the national army are there. I spoke with my father and older brother on Thursday and they were fine. The situation’s been unstable for a long time and they’ve learnt to live with it. What brings me comfort is that as a sportsman you can give happiness to your country, even in a difficult time.

If I, or Aruna Dindane (of Anderlecht) or Didier Drogba (Marseille) do well, it makes people in the Ivory Coast happy. That makes me work extra hard.”

Toure’s family live in a house they have been able to buy with money he regularly sends home. “My mother died last January and I only wish I could have given her more. When I first came to Arsenal, she phoned me every day and she would be proud of me now. My dad was important when I was growing up, but my mother more.” Toure reaches inside his top and takes out a silver pendant. Inscribed on the back is: “I love my mum and my wife.

”



TOURE and Arsenal are a relationship born of love. It is not just that he signed on Valentine’s Day 2002. He grew up besotted by the team. “Always Arsenal,” he grins, pointing to himself. “Not United!” The Old Trafford club, as everywhere, are well supported in the Ivory Coast. But Toure always liked the Gunners and followed their games on satellite television. He was elated to become one.

“After a week of my trial, Mr Wenger called me into his office and said, ‘Here’s Mr David Dein’. He had a piece of paper and I signed it before he could take it away. I said, ‘Give it here, quick!’ I didn’t look at it! I did this!” Toure grabs a page from my notepad and scribbles his name as fast as he can. He is in hysterics by now.

There is more laughter when I ask about his trial. He was invited to join the first-team squad in an “attackers against defenders” game. An attacker got the ball and Toure steamed in and knocked the poor fellow to the ground. That man was Wenger. “It’s true!” Toure giggles. “You get a trial and you have to show you’re the man so, yes, I kicked him. I got on my knees and said, ‘Sorry, sorry’. but everyone was laughing, the manager too!” Wenger had followed Toure’s progress for four years, having been alerted by Roland Scheubel, a journalist, to the extraordinary work a mutual friend, Jean-Marc Guillou, was doing at a youth academy in Abidjan. The academy was linked to ASEC, the Ivory Coast’s biggest club, but had been set up by Guillou, who gave Wenger his first big coaching break at Cannes and now runs Arsenal’s feeder club, Beveren.

Guillou and ASEC subsequently fell out and are currently involved in a legal battle over transfer fees. Arsenal still owe an appearance-linked £500,000 for Toure, but cannot make the payment until the dispute is resolved.

Wenger first watched the player at a youth tournament hosted by Feyenoord. Toure was sent off. “We reached the final but lost to Feyenoord. They played 15 minutes of injury time so they could win and the referee gave me two yellow cards for nothing.”

Wenger was not put off. There were greater talents at ASEC, Wenger and Toure both admit, but none had Toure’s energy or attitude. “I was not the best player but, at the academy, I used my time the best. I didn’t think about going to the cinema or going out to find a girl. I was always thinking about work, about my future.”

It helped that the academy environment, where boys live in dormitories, attend school classes and train three times a day, was similar to that of the army base where Toure grew up. “The military love sport and there were lots of facilities and other children to play with. But at the same time it was an army camp and there you can’t just do anything you want. You have to respect people and my father taught me discipline.”

Guillou’s academy was just a few years old when Toure arrived, and had yet to build its reputation. “Boys were lucky to be there because the academy even paid for their flip-flops and underwear, but at the same time nobody knew much about the place. I was doing well at school and thinking about training to be a lawyer. Leaving to pursue football was a big decision. Some parents stopped their kids from going to the academy but now that me, Dindane and others are playing in Europe, everyone wants to go. That’s life. You have to be lucky sometimes.”

The academy’s status changed one miraculous day in 1999. ASEC had won the African Champions League and faced Esperance of Tunisia, one of the continent’s greatest sides, in the African Super Cup. Against full-strength opponents, they decided to field a youth team. Toure and company produced a 3-1 victory, which turned the heads of football cognoscenti across the world. “No one was thinking we’d win, so the stadium was empty, but we were doing great,” Toure says. “When we came out for the second half, the stadium was almost full. The match was on television and people watching had to come and see for themselves.”

Toure still regards it as the greatest game of his life. He played in central defence, which was always his position before he joined Arsenal. His sheer athleticism (Toure was second only to Henry in Arsenal’s annual sprint tests last summer) and willingness led Wenger to try him in a range of roles initially. Last close season he went to see the manager. “I said to the boss, ‘I want to play in my position’. I like to play everywhere , but I can’t make a career like that. If you play left back, right back, midfield, you can’t learn properly and you’ll only end up on the bench. The boss will say, ‘I can put him there because if there are injuries, I can put him on in any position’. I didn’t want to be like that. One of the nice things about Mr Wenger is he listens.”

Wenger had thought about using Toure in central defence in the FA Cup final, when Sol Campbell was injured, but fielded Oleg Luzhny alongside Keown instead. One reservation might have been Toure’s physique. At 6ft and 12st, he is light for a centre-back. “I’m not as big as Sol or Tony Adams, but it’s not a problem. I’ve got my jumping. God gave me some physical power, you know. Roberto Ayala’s not tall, but he’s a great player. It’s the same with Fabio Cannavaro.”

If Wenger listens to Toure, then Toure hangs on every word from his manager: “I’ve got so much to learn, and listening to the boss is the only way I can improve.”

More than anything, Wenger has brought order and calm to a player who, when he joined Arsenal, could be like “a crazy dog” and, indeed, two days after signing gave himself a stress fracture of the back and was out for four months after flying into one tackle too many in a training game. At the same time, Wenger has not sought to contain the joyous enthusiasm that, in the 90th minute of matches, can see Toure still charging upfield from the back to augment an attack.

“I want to do my best here,” Toure says. “Win lots of cups for Arsenal. Even become a legend at this club. Why not?” Toure looks out of the window across the playing fields. “That was my first impression when I came here — the pitch. It was unbelievable. So many pitches. In Africa, if there was something like that, there would be a thousand children playing football every day, all the time. Soon the ground would have no grass!” He gets ready to leave. Waiting at home is Auore, his wife, who “gives me my strength”.

Does she treat him like a king? “No, like the man she loves. When you love someone, you can give them everything.”

Ishmael, one of Toure’s six brothers — he also has two sisters — is training to be an accountant in Britain and has come to stay. Two other brothers are doing well in football. Yaya, 21, has just moved from Beveren to Metalurg Donetsk for £1.4m and Ibrahim, 18, is at the ASEC academy. “He’s a striker, two-footed and very fast. He might have a chance of a trial here.”

Along with family and football, the third F that sustains Toure is faith. A devout Muslim, he has just been to the mosque in Hatfield for prayers. “People don’t know enough about Islam. It’s a great thing. You have to respect each other and you can’t kill anyone when you’re a true Muslim. I come from Africa. Everything is going well for me. It’s not because I’m a genius, or good-looking, or a gentleman. It’s because I pray to my God.”



A PICTURE can be worth a thousand words but sometimes you read a person best when the cameras are not on them. Stamford Bridge, 10.30pm last Wednesday.

The last journalists are about to go home. Toure is leaving the ground and behind him is Neil Sullivan, Chelsea’s reserve goalkeeper. He stops to let Sullivan catch up, pats his back and strikes up a conversation. At the exit are some stewards. Toure stops, shakes hands, signs autographs.

Up in the stand, the stadium catering staff are hanging about, fags in hand, waiting to knock off.

“TOU-RE!” one of them shouts. Toure looks up and waves at them. And he lights up this dark, vast, near-empty place with his enormous smile

 

[seanconvey66]

Brilliant article, i love that guy so much!!

 

[Soler]

Two parts that just made me smile:

"There is more laughter when I ask about his trial. He was invited to join the first-team squad in an “attackers against defenders” game. An attacker got the ball and Toure steamed in and knocked the poor fellow to the ground. That man was Wenger."

"Ibrahim, 18, is at the ASEC academy. “He’s a striker, two-footed and very fast. He might have a chance of a trial here.”"

Please let him be like Kolo!

 

[GunnerForLife]

Brilliant article. An amazing lad he is. I love this guy....

 

[Mark]

Yaya is definetly promising and this Ibrahim guy sounds it too. I expect they will both come here on trial during the summer.

 

[Soler]

Anyone reckon we may have missed the boat with Yaya?

 

[bobbypires]

Brilliant. Thanks Adam. :clap

 

[Adam]

It's purely a question of talent, which we know he has enough of and which we know Wenger has acknowledged. He isn't going to spend a career in Metalurg if he is Arsenal material.

Ibrahim - as quick as Toure, two footed - i like the sound of that very, very much. I have a tendency to admire pure athleticism and technique. Let's hope he has the latter in abundance.

 

[Soler]

And, having an older brother at the club would help mould him. It'd certainly give him confidence if big brother is there every day.

 

[seanconvey66]

Has any1 here actually ever seen Yaya Toure play?? I havent i know people rate him but what are thay judging it on? And y is every1 so sure that he'll end up at Arsenal?

 

[Soler]

I've seen him play on a highlight show for Beveren.

 

[seanconvey66]

And was he that good? The biggest reason i see alot of people saying he should come to us is because hes kolos brother.

 

[Adam]

I have seen a few highlight shows, and read enough to know that he is a talent. To shine in that Beveren side, and perform admirably against Anderlecht, Brugges, and other big Belgian teams shows he is a talent.

Do not forget how these top Belgian teams have fared in the Champions League. Their level is not that poor, and if he can reciprocate form against Brugge (who beat Ajax), then i have no doubt within the better team of Arsenal he would have some useful qualities.

Wack in a quote by Arsène which goes along the lines of "He will be a great, great player for Arsenal" then we have reason for optimism.

 

[Soler]

And was he that good? The biggest reason i see alot of people saying he should come to us is because hes kolos brother.

He wasn't bad. On this show I watch - 'European Football Show' - they always round up the Belgian league. Whenever Beveren were on, Yaya was quite good. I haven't seen him too much, but I think Adam might be able to expand on it ... he's similar to a young Patrick Vieira.

 

[Adam]

http://www.arsenal-mania.com/?page=arti ... icle_id=43

Have a read of that.

 

[seanconvey66]

The league isnt that strong but the top fe sides arent bad. Id say its a little below the standard of the dutch and perhaps a little above scotland. But to say from a few highlights that hes good enough to break into our team is abit steep in my opinion. Im not saying hes a bad player to the contrary in fact but to come to the conclusion that he will be an Arsenal player as he looks good on highlights is abit presumptous. (spelling) not a pop at u Adam either, i just think its abit too much expectation on a lad of 18 who might never be good enough for Arsenal.

 

[Soler]

"His first year for Beveren didn’t go well, but last year and this season Yaya has been one of the best players in the Belgian competition"

You know who that reminds me of? Kolo. Cheers, Adam!

 

[seanconvey66]

Yea ive read that b4, but i wouldnt be suprised if u never hear of the lad again. I remeber when Kinkladze was at Man city every1 was going mad abt him and I think it was Royle may have been Ball wanted to know abt another Georgian, Kinkladze simply said "better than me" they bought him for a million or so (abt 5 or 6 years ago.) And he was pants. Players often say there friends, family are better than them, and it dont work out in many cases. Yaya could be a brilliant player but because Kolo said so, doesnt make it true.