by It is impossible not to love Kolo Toure. As a fixed fan favorite in Liverpool, the Ivorian arrived on this day in 2013 as a replacement for the Clubblegende Jamie Carragher in Angeld in Anfield.
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He made 71 appearances in three seasons, scored a goal and was part of the team who narrowly missed the Title Premier League, Europa League and League Cup under Brendan Rodgers and Jürgen Klopp. However, the defender was not even present for the most memorable moment of his career in Liverpool in May 2015.
Tour, now 44 and on Pep Guardiolas Man City Coaching employees, joined the Reds against Steven Gerrard’s last game as a half-time replacement in the notorious 6-1 defeat of the Reds.
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Hours after the last pipe, the majority of the Liverpool squad were left in a holiday after the season to Dubai as a solemn dispatch for his legendary skipper.
During this trip, on which a video of the Reds squad, which sang the famous Kolo and Yaya tour singing, sang into the ‘No Limit’ melody.
But Kolo Toure was nowhere in sight after he had to miss the trip.
But when he was absent in Dubai, he was still partly for the spontaneous singing after a call to his captain when the Liverpool squad made one evening.
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“We started in a large stretch lobster,” Gerrard recalled in his autobiography published in 2015. “We were all 25 of us in lobster and on the beers.
“My phone was on the music system. The music suddenly stopped when I had a call. Kolo Toures name came up on the phone. I put Kolo on speakers.
“He called me to apologize to me, the big man because he wasn’t with us. He had a game of charity on the Ivory Coast. We talked away, but after a while I could hardly hear Kolo.
“The boys had sang the song Kolo and Yaya in his honor. They still sang it after I said goodbye to Kolo and we had come out of the lobster and made it on the way to the restaurant.
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“We had to go up a escalator and I went ahead so that I could film the boys. They looked together well and danced together. Next I know that Mamadou Sakho packed my cell phone.
“I could have stayed away from it, but I am the captain. I run from the front. So I ran in front of the dance and vocal team. I took responsibility.
“Whenever we sing ‘Kolo … Kolo, Kolo … Kolo, Kolo Toure! ‘ The boys all went low and ducked near the floor. And then we went up and climbed up and reached to the sky when we sang “Yaya … yaya, yaya … yaya, yaya tour!” And then I took it deep for the next.Kolo … Kolo, Kolo … Kolo, Kolo Toure! ‘
“A security guard grabbed my cell phone from Sakho. And then we had a full set to take Sakho with us and we sang. ‘Kolo … Kolo, Kolo … Kolo, Kolo Toure! ‘ And “Yaya … yaya, yaya … yaya, yaya tour!” The security guard filmed us in a hot, sticky and happy night in the United Arab Emirates.
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“As usual, but through football, my underlying passion, I would have ended here and feel so happy and sing about two brothers from the Ivory Coast in Dubai, one teammate and the other an old rival from Manchester City?”
Gerrard continued: “When we came to the restaurant, we had a group chat about WhatsApp and I set up the video so that everyone could see it. We surprised ourselves. We were viral within 24 hours.
“One of the boys had sent it to a buddy who had posted it on YouTube. It went Bonkers. The English women’s football team made the song and I had the Sunday League teams that sent me videos of their versions.
“The girls were entertained at home. ‘Daddy, what do you do?’ They asked somewhat.Kolo … Kolo, Kolo … Kolo, Kolo Toure! ‘”
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In retrospect, it seems most surreal that such a night took place barely 24 hours after the beating of Liverpool at Stoke. Gerrard sat in the Britannia changing room after the game and thought: “Can we cancel it? It looks so bad to go away after such a heavy defeat.”
As a result, “in the first 24 hours it was a steamed journey” when “nobody said much on the flight … after five hours earlier”.
Fortunately, Liverpool could bounce back and enjoy their trip when they made Gerrard a farewell to remember.
They had hit Rockboden in Stoke and wanted to deviate the club’s largest player. But in Dubai, when they sang the name of Kolo Toures, they began to pick up the pieces.
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It would not be the last time that this group was encouraged by players not to deal with such a failure. Just 12 months later, after he had lost the final of the Europa League, the new manager Klopp ordered his squad on the dance floor when he asked for it to stop being so misery.
“Back to the hotel where there would have been a party, if we won, as a player they are just down. They just want to go to bed and just try to sleep,” Jordan Henderson, who took over Gerrard as Reds captain.
“There were some of us in the corner because he (Klopp) said that when we come back, everyone can get back into the area of the reception. Everyone comes down and some of us sit with our tails between our legs in the corner.
“He comes over and said: ‘Will you be so all night, why are you so miserable? It’s a bad moment, but then you stay together and need everyone together. That is just the beginning.”
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“In the end he basically said that he wanted us all on the dance floor at the end of the night. We sang ‘We are Liverpool’. It was completely different from everything I have ever experienced before.”
Another year and Klopp himself became viral after being shot with friends after Liverpool’s Champions League final against Real Madrid in 2018.
“We saw the European Cup. Madrid was all the luck. We swear that we are always cool. We will bring it back to Liverpool.”
Another 12 months later, Klopp would deliver such a speaking vow than the Reds Tottenham Hotspur defeated to win the European trophy for the sixth time in the history of the club.
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If you don’t laugh, you will cry. The rainbow comes after the rain. Gerrard might have feared that the counter reaction in 2015 would be the path of the Liverpool team, but at the time the viral video brought at least a smile on the faces of the followers after a disappointing season. It was at least a sign that they were not defeated and an attitude that Klopp undoubtedly wants to see in his future squad.
Now looking back, the sign of camaraderie was in honor of Toure immediately after such a low, a small, first step that the players left behind in the coming months and years would become Klopps ‘mentality monsters’.
