The Manchester City executive smiled knowingly when asked how, and why, the club put up with the incessant boat-rocking by Yaya Toure’s agent Dmitri Seluk.
“There is Yaya, and there is Yaya’s agent,” came the answer.
And when Toure wants to know why his name has not cropped up in terms of erecting statues to club legends outside the Etihad Stadium, he needs to look back at the behaviour of Seluk – and his own endorsement of that behaviour – for his answers.
The Ivory Coast legend has described the decision to build a tribute to David Silva, to add to the one already underway for Vincent Kompany, as “odd”.
But it is not odd, at all, despite Yaya’s undoubted place in the short-list of all-time City greats.
City fans love Yaya, to this day, for what he did on the field. But they were frustrated and irritated to a remarkable degree by some of the nonsense that surrounded him off it.
Traditionally, the onset of the British summer has been heralded by the return of migratory swallows, or the start of the cricket season.
But for City fans, during Yaya’s glorious eight-year stay at the club, it was clear summer was coming when Seluk started chirping that his man wanted to leave, unless he got another large wedge of money.
That is an agent’s job, for sure, to make sure his client gets what he is worth, and for that Seluk cannot be blamed.
But the way he went about it, with public whinges and outright attacks on the club and its staff, was wholly inappropriate.
Yaya kept out of it, but his silence made him complicit.
Seluk’s attempts to squeeze more money out of City, or to move his man on, were clumsy and usually fruitless.
Yaya’s loyalty to him puzzled many – there were, and are, much better, more sophisticated football agents out there, who go about their business without the bluster and false outrage.
The player finally realised it last year, when he finally split from Seluk and took up with the more measured character of Leon Mann.
The Ivorian’s attachment to Seluk was touching. The two met when Seluk was vice-president of now-defunct Ukrainian club Metalurh Donetsk, and took the 20-year-old from Belgian club Beveren.
It was an astute piece of business, and Seluk soon realised he was sitting on a goldmine.
He took Yaya under his wing, guiding and protecting him, when even his own club’s fans racially abused him.
Toure never forget Seluk’s kindness in those early days, and was grateful that the colourful, brash Russian negotiated increasingly lucrative moves to Olympiacos, Monaco and eventually Barcelona.
The fact was that Yaya’s incredible ability, combining physical power with football delicacy and intelligence, sold itself.
The player’s stays at those clubs were pock-marked by his agent’s whining and threats, to the point that – while they were all sad to see a fine footballer leave – ridding themselves of Seluk was like scratching a bad itch.
City dealt with Toure and Seluk separately, but the fact that the player continued to indulge his agent’s excesses was a constant source of annoyance, to the club hierarchy as well as the fans.
He was in the top wage bracket at City, and worshipped by the support, yet Seluk claimed he was shown no respect.
He even claimed there were no pictures of his client included in the murals which decorated the Etihad Stadium, and no replica shirts bearing his name in the club shop.
Which came as a surprise to anyone driving along Alan Turing Way to see the 35ft tall image of Yaya, or delved through rack after rack of “Toure 42” tops in the store.
The birthday cake incident has become infamous, and that sprang from Seluk complaining that Yaya had received a cake on his birthday, but that Roberto Carlos had been given a Bugatti car by the Anzi Makhachkala owner.
It was preposterous, and did nothing for Yaya’s image.
Given the chance to distance himself from the comments, the player doubled down, tweeting his support for Seluk – something he came to regret.
He said last year: “The birthday cake damaged me a lot. When people see me in France or Africa, they say ‘You want cake?’ I was so p***** (off). I was telling him (Seluk), you should not do that, no need. I talked with Khaldoon (Al Mubarak, City’s chairman), and I was saying, ‘It is not me, don’t worry’.
“The bad mistake I did was doing (tweeting) ‘OK, he is right’. That’s the one that’s killing me. People started to believe what he said is me. The fans were reading this, thinking bad about me, and I can understand it.
“Before the birthday cake, I accepted (Seluk’s behaviour), because I respect (him). You have to give him credit too, because he has helped me through a lot. But he did a lot of bad things. It was too much.”
Things came to a head when Seluk launched an astonishing attack on Guardiola, shortly into the manager’s City career, claiming he was lower than a dog, among other insults.
Guardiola earned instant respect from City fans by exiling Toure from his matchday squads until Seluk apologised.
Until then, managers had put up with the disruption and damage to the club’s image simply because Yaya was irresistible on the pitch, and was also a good trainer and no trouble in himself.
The tactic worked like a dream, as Seluk backtracked and Toure was back in the fold – even if his banishment irreparably damaged his relations with Guardiola.
That bad blood rose to the surface after Toure had left the club in 2018.
Despite all the evidence of Seluk’s absymal behaviour, and the way it had sullied and stunted Toure’s legacy, the player came out with the outrageous suggestion that Guardiola’s treatment of him was down to racism.
Not only was that a disgusting and unfounded accusation, it is damaging to throw flippant accusations of racism around – it cheapens the seriousness of the subject.
He claimed Guardiola had been “cruel” to him, which was breathtaking when everyone could see how Seluk had behaved, and how Toure’s silence had backed him up.
In football terms alone, Yaya would be among the first to have a statue – his eight years were packed with great goals, breathtaking spectacle, beautiful football and match-winning moments.
His legacy at City is forever sullied by the background carping and insults tossed around by Seluk, which were endorsed by Yaya, either tacit or explicit.
For eight years, City’s owners and execs dealt with that by treating them as separate entities – Yaya was no real problem, taken in isolation.
But the issue ever went away, and finally boiled into the Mexican stand-off involving Guardiola and the club on one side, and Toure and Seluk on the other.
That led to Toure’s disgraceful accusations of racism, which angered just about everyone at the club.
Silva and Kompany graced the pitch in much the same way as Yaya, but without a hint of trouble.
Their agents negotiated good contracts for their men without any public slanging matches.
Unfortunately for Yaya, football legacy comes down to much more than just doing a brilliant job on the field.
