IAN LADYMAN: Yaya Toure needs to make a personal apology to Pep Guardiola for race slur

Yaya Toure, that great Ivorian footballer, wants to coach and is working with age-group teams at Tottenham. It is thought the club will soon announce his arrival on to the club’s full-time staff.

Last week he spoke about it in an interview in The Times. But it was only a passing reference because as usual Toure ended up talking about Pep Guardiola. As it usually does, it was this topic that made the headline.

‘I would be delighted to see Pep again,’ it said. In an interview with this paper last year the sell was similar: ‘It was a mistake, I said sorry, I want peace.’

What Toure refers to is the fall-out from an interview with a French publication in 2018 in which he said: ‘Pep did everything to spoil my last season (at Man City). He was cruel with me.

‘I asked myself if it was because of my colour. I’m not the first. Other Barca players asked the question too.

‘Guardiola insists he has no problems with black players because he is too intelligent to be caught out. But when you realise that he has problems with Africans, wherever he goes, I ask myself questions.

‘He will never admit it. But the day he will line up a team in which we find five Africans, not naturalised, I promise I will send him a cake.’

So there we have it. Shortly after the end of his years working with a coach under whom he won seven significant trophies at Barcelona and City, Toure called Guardiola a racist.

Since then Toure, aged 38 now, has paid lip service to the issue. He has said the interview was a ‘huge mistake’. He has said his words were ‘twisted’, but he never sued. It is commonly reported that he then wrote to Guardiola to apologise. What he actually did — by his own admission — is this.

‘I emailed a letter to try to communicate with some important people at the club to apologise,’ he told Sportsmail last April.

Not quite a personal apology to Guardiola, then. Instead, an email to Manchester City that he admits may or may not have passed beneath the manager’s eyes. Not the same at all.

If he really is contrite — and he does seem to be — then why not call Guardiola? Or go to his house?

Toure’s answer to that is that he does not have Guardiola’s phone number.

Why not try to get it, then? Or call the club and ask to be put through? When Yaya Toure is on the line, he probably has a sporting chance of getting past even the most stubborn receptionist.

Maybe the truth is that Toure doesn’t want to say sorry quite badly enough. Or maybe he does not quite appreciate the sheer depth and horror of what he said.

This was not a quip, an off the cuff comment delivered in anger. This was a five-paragraph attempt to destroy a man’s reputation. We can only imagine what Guardiola felt when he learned of it.

These men were great together once. Toure was a superb, intelligent and powerful footballer. A rampaging midfielder in his pomp but also — one night in Rome in 2009 — an emergency central defender asked to plug a gap for Guardiola in a Champions League final against a Manchester United team that had Cristiano Ronaldo playing up front.

Toure was exceptional that night, as he was most of his career. With Guardiola he won that Champions League, two Spanish titles, a Spanish Cup and then a Premier League title in England.

Toure under Guardiola at City was different. He was not the same player by then, had a troublesome loudmouth agent and could not cope with the marginalisation that followed.

But what he said about the Catalan was grave and with that in mind his persistent and rather glib references to the matter serve only to make it all worse rather than better.

If Toure wants to apologise, he should do so. Properly and in person. If not then he should register the damage done and get on with his life.

KENWRIGHT TARGET OF BENITEZ GRIEF

Bill Kenwright is known to feel that the appointment of Rafa Benitez last summer was one of the biggest mistakes in the history of his beloved Everton. By all accounts, he hasn’t got over it.

Kenwright has received plenty of stick for this, too, among other things.

At Everton matches, supporters in the Main Stand have stayed behind to scream at him. Others have waited outside the car park on Goodison Road to shout at him as he leaves.

Kenwright, 76, didn’t appoint Benitez. That decision was made by the man who effectively owns and controls Everton, Farhad Moshiri.

Moshiri has 94 per cent of the club’s shares. In reality, anything that happens to Everton — good, bad or indifferent — is on him.

But Moshiri lives in Monaco and doesn’t attend many home games so it’s Kenwright who tends to get all the grief.

Which begs the question: why stick around?

NATIONS LEAGUE PERFECT WORLD CUP PREP

The Nations League was dreamed up by UEFA five years ago and I thought it was ridiculous.

Who needs yet another international competition in an already crowded calendar? It turns out that we did, that’s who.

Watching England play a completely useless friendly with Ivory Coast last Tuesday, I scanned the fixture list for hope of something better and found it in June and September.

Six Nations League games, against Italy, Hungary and Germany, will be competitive and real. As a result, they will be the perfect preparation for the World Cup.