Kolo Toure played for Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool and Celtic during his career yet you almost certainly like him. Or at least don’t hate him. That’s a pretty impressive achievement.
The idea of a universally-liked footballer seems far-fetched in these days of hyper-partisanship, but a handful do exist.
Juan Mata and Peter Crouch instantly spring to mind as players you’d have to be a special kind of bastard to hate – and a quick straw poll of friends suggests Kolo Abib Toure falls into that same category.
This, after all, is a man who claimed to have had a dog for seven years that he has never even touched. A man that inadvertently revealed a love for Whitney Houston when asked to name the favourite terrace song about him – which he then went on to sing, complete with the actions. You know the one.
This is a man that Liverpool fans loved even after he made a mistake, just because of the way he reacted. A man that gave away a truly ridiculous penalty in extra time of a League Cup tie against Middlesbrough yet somehow left fans with a positive memory of his contribution that night after rifling home the most emphatic of penalties in the shootout.
Even when he was being bad, he was being brilliant: there have been few handballs as comical as the one he produced to deny Wayne Rooney a certain goal in a game at Manchester United in 2006.
Still the GOAT handball in PL history, that was never given. Kolo Toure vs. Rooney! pic.twitter.com/AoU75cM1q9
— HK. (@HammaadKhaann) February 19, 2018
Frankly, anyone that has inspired as many memes as Toure is clearly worthy of some sort of celebration. Disliking him might just be an insult to the concept of life itself.
The outpouring of support for Toure on social media when he announced his retirement to join Brendan Rodgers’ technical staff at Celtic was evidence of just how affable the Ivorian is, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that, at his peak, Toure was also one of the best defenders in the Premier League, a constant fixture in Arsenal’s record-setting 2003-04 Invincible season.
He joined the Gunners in February 2002 after a short trial, and of course there is a brilliant story – this is Toure, after all – about that trial, as told by Ray Parlour.
You simply have to listen to it in full to appreciate it, but to cut a long story short if you can’t listen right now, so eager was Toure to impress that he smashed into Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp and, hilariously, Arsene Wenger in…
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