Update: |Kolo Toure interview: I couldn’t say no to Man City return – now I’m building their future News

The Manchester Evening News chats exclusively to former Manchester City defender Kolo Toure, who has quietly returned to the club this season as under-18 assistant coach.

It was arguably one of the more surprising signings Manchester City made last year, bringing back a former cult hero in an unlikely new role.

Kolo Toure was part of the squad that won City their first Premier League title in 2012 and helped oversee the transition from newly-rich contenders to Champions of England. His brother helped that journey too, and their names are sung at the Etihad every game.

A popular figure, Kolo went on to join Liverpool and later Celtic, winning more silverware on top of his time at City and previously Arsenal. He would begin coaching at Celtic under Brendan Rodgers and follow him to Leicester where he has FA Cup, Scottish Premiership and Scottish League Cup medals as a coach to accompany his bulging trophy cabinet from his playing career.

An ill-fated spell at Wigan in his first managerial role put the breaks on a promising coaching career in 2023 and 18 months out of the game followed to show the brutal side of an industry that rarely offers second chances. Toure’s quiet return to the coaching scene at City in the summer barely raised an eyebrow, partly because he wasn’t back in a first team role like he had enjoyed since retiring in 2017, but in the academy with the under-18s.

And not even as their new head coach, Toure has stepped back into the assistant role at the City Football Academy as he looks to get back into coaching following that Wigan hiccup.

“It’s not always that you were a good player and now you’re a good coach,” explains U18 Head Coach Oliver Reiss, working with Toure for the first time. “There are so many examples where it’s not the case. But in this case because he can give me and us as a team a lot of experience of how he saw it as a player. At the same time he wants to develop, he’s interested.”

Reiss’ playing career ended at 19 and he is younger than Toure having coached in Germany for 20 years before earning the City job this summer. He leans on Toure’s experience and so do his players.

“We discuss for hours one situation in the game, what we both think, what his feeling as a player was and I can’t remember my feeling as a player,” Reiss admits. “And when Kolo tells a player to go left, of course they go left. It’s Kolo Toure. His experience on the pitch, with the players, it also develops me. We can benefit from each other.”

One of those players benefitting directly from Toure’s experience is Kian Noble, who grins from ear to ear at the mention of working with the two-time Premier League winner.

Noble tells MEN Sport: “He’s great, brilliant. He works on the individual side of the game. He’s a top defender, he’s won everything. What little nuances can I take from him and what has he learned that can help me? It’s been great for my development, the intensity and development he brings.

“He’s won the Premier League by the way! But he’s still shouting and getting us up for Blackburn or Wolves away, every game he’s the same. Motivationally, top. His depth of knowledge of the game working with a great manager like Wenger, it’s been great for me to soak up that information.”

Speaking exclusively to the Manchester Evening News, Toure’s enthusiasm for his current role is clear and there is no sense that he is treading water until a return to first team coaching comes along.

“I was looking to get back into a job and when the opportunity came and I spoke to Thomas [Krucken, City Academy Director] about an opportunity to come here, it was fantastic,” Toure explains.

“Especially working for the club I played for, I had a great time playing here. My connection to Man City has always been there because I worked with the loan players for a moment. When the opportunity came I was very happy, it’s very important for me to stay in the game.”

Toure smiles when his chant is brought up – he says it is ‘special’ and ‘touches his heart’ every time he hears it sung. “For Yaya and me I feel so happy. It means a lot after all these years the fans still remember me and my brother,” he says. “That’s why you come to a club, you have the glory and everything but when people remember you as a player and human being it’s really special.”

Now, his focus is firmly on getting stuck in to his new role developing young talent and using the experience to develop himself. “You can always improve yourself as a coach and it’s good to work with young players because you get to know the future players,” he continued. “How they act, how they are, what they like, what they want from you.

“That was a really important step for me, to keep getting the knowledge of the game, with my experience as an ex-football player and then as a coach. It’s the right step to stay in the game and keep improving myself and enjoying football.”

Enjoyment is a factor that Toure repeats – his time at Wigan didn’t go to plan one bit and 18 months is a long time to be out of work in football. Maybe coming back to a club where he enjoyed four years as a player was the right move at the right time, albeit with the £200m City Football Academy far grander in scale than the Carrington complex he left in 2013. It helps, too, that some familiar staff members are still at the club 12 years on.

Toure speaks most enthusiastically, unsurprisingly, about passing on his defensive knowledge which is working a charm: the youth team are on a 23-game winning run with 12 clean sheets and only 13 goals conceded.

“It’s a pleasure to work with them, especially the defenders because this is my speciality,” he says. “Working with the back line is always something special, and with the team in general for the defensive part of the game is really good. Oli is a really good coach, allowing me to work on the defensive side and I love working defensively. This is my bread and butter, something I’m learning and analysing and I’m so pleased to pass on to all these young players.”

One change from Toure’s career to date is the switch to focussing on development rather than winning. Since arriving in England with Arsenal in 2002, he’s always been in title races and competing for trophies when the thought of results not being the priority is simply not allowed. Imagine telling Arsene Wenger in the early-2000’s that losing a must-win Premier League game was good for development.

“We’re here to develop young players and make them better to understand the game. It doesn’t matter the result, for me it’s all development,” he says, embracing the academy spirit – before imparting some of those old-school mentality lessons of his own.

“But you can develop players to have the winning mentality – every day in training we push them to win the small side game. You can see this season how the team is doing and the progress is there and with a few games to go of course we want to win. But what we are implementing with Oli to the boys is working really well. You see the results and they have to learn when you do a job to finish it well. This is the part now to finish, enjoy the moment, give your best and have no regrets at the end of the competition.”

With a Youth Cup semi-final on Thursday at Watford, Toure’s knowledge of winning leagues and cups at the highest level could be a secret weapon for the academy this season. And he is so focussed on those dual aims that there is no thought past this season and what a year coaching under-18s means for his career.

He says: “This season is going to the end. We just need to keep doing what we’ve been doing, focussing hard and finish the job. For me it’s all about the next game, now it’s just focussing on Thursday against Watford. We put all our effort for that game and see after what will be the next game. Next season is another season but let’s finish this season and see what happens next.”