It’s impossible not to love Kolo Toure, unless you’re a Wigan Athletic fan following his brief stint as manager at the DW Stadium earlier this season perhaps.
A firm fan-favourite at Liverpool, the Ivorian joined the Reds on a free transfer from Man City in the summer of 2013 as a replacement for club-legend Jamie Carragher. In three seasons he would make 71 appearances, scoring one goal, and was a part of the side that narrowly missed out on Premier League, Europa League, and League Cup titles under Brendan Rodgers and Jurgen Klopp.
Yet the much-loved defender, who celebrates his 42nd birthday today, wasn’t even present for arguably the most memorable moment of his Liverpool career in May 2015.
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The centre-back came on as a half-time substitute in the Reds’ infamous 6-1 defeat to Stoke City in what was Steven Gerrard’s final game for the club. Hours after the final whistle, the majority of the Liverpool squad were off on a post-season holiday to Dubai as a celebratory send-off for their legendary captain.
It was during this trip where a video of the Reds squad singing the famous Kolo and Yaya Toure chant, to the tune of ‘No Limit’, went viral with Gerrard uncharacteristically jumping up and down at the front as he led his team-mate in song. Yet Liverpool defender Toure was nowhere in sight, having been forced to miss the trip.
But while he was absent in Dubai, the Ivorian was inadvertently still, in part, responsible for the Reds squad’s impromptu chanting following a phone call to his captain as the Liverpool squad headed on a night out.
“We went off in a big stretch Hummer,” Gerrard recalled in his autobiography published in 2015. “All twenty-five of us were in the Hummer and on the beers.
“My phone was on the music system. The music suddenly stopped as I had a call. Kolo Toure’s name came up on the phone. I put Kolo on loudspeaker.
“He was phoning to apologise to me, the Big Man, for not being with us. He had a charity match in the Ivory Coast. We were chatting away but after a while I could hardly hear Kolo.
“The lads had all started singing the Kolo and Yaya song in his honour. They were still singing it after I said goodbye to Kolo and we got out of the Hummer and made our way to the restaurant.
“We had to go up an escalator and I went ahead so I could film the boys. They looked good singing and dancing together. Next thing I know Mamadou Sakho grabbed my phone.
“I could have stayed out of it but, f**k it, I am the captain. I lead from the front. So I raced over to the front of the dancing and singing crew. I took charge. I got into it big time.
“Whenever we chanted ‘Kolo… Kolo, Kolo… Kolo, Kolo Toure!’ the boys all went low, ducking down to near floor level. And then we went up, climbing high, reaching to the sky as we chanted ‘Yaya… Yaya, Yaya… Yaya, Yaya Toure!’ And then I led them down low again for the next ‘Kolo… Kolo, Kolo… Kolo, Kolo Toure!’
“A security guard grabbed my phone off Sakho. And then we had a full set as Sakho joined in and we chanted ‘Kolo… Kolo, Kolo… Kolo, Kolo Toure!’ and ‘Yaya… Yaya, Yaya… Yaya, Yaya Toure!’ The security guard filmed us on a hot, sticky and happy night in the United Arab Emirates.
“How else, but through football, my underlying passion, could I have ended up here, feeling so blissfully crazy, singing in Dubai about two brothers from the Ivory Coast, one a teammate and the other an old rival from Manchester City?”
He continued: “When we got to the restaurant, we had a group chat on WhatsApp and I put the video up so everyone could see it. We surprised ourselves. Within 24 hours we had gone viral.
“One of the lads had sent it to a mate who had posted it on YouTube. It went bonkers. The England women’s football team did the song and I had Sunday League sides sending me videos of their versions.
“The girls back home were entertained. ‘Daddy, what are you doing?’ they asked, reasonably enough. ‘That’s not you.’ But it was me. Away from the pressure and the worry, the responsibility and the striving, the ambition and the heartache, I could also dance and chant: ‘Kolo… Kolo, Kolo… Kolo, Kolo Toure!’”
Looking back, it seems most surreal that such a night took place barely 24 hours after Liverpool had been thrashed 6-1 away at Stoke City. Sitting in the dressing room at the Britannia after the game, Gerrard thought, "Can we cancel it? It looks so bad to be going away after such a heavy defeat."
As a result, "for the first 24 hours it was a subdued trip," as "no-one said much on the flight...still in shock after the game five hours earlier."
Fortunately, Liverpool were able to bounce back and enjoy their trip as they gave Gerrard a send-off to remember.
At Stoke, they had hit rock-bottom and were about to wave off the club’s greatest ever player. But in Dubai, as they chanted Kolo Toure’s name, they started to pick up the pieces.
It wouldn't be the last time this group of players would be encouraged not to dwell on such failure. Just 12 months later, after losing the Europa League final, new manager Klopp would order his squad onto the dance floor as he demanded they stopped being so miserable.
"Going back to the hotel where there'd have been a party if we won, as a player you're just so down. You just want to go to bed really and just try to sleep," captain Jordan Henderson would recall earlier this year on the High Performance Podcast.
"There were a few of us in the corner because he [Klopp] said everybody when we get back is down to the reception bar area. Everybody comes down and a few of us are sitting in the corner with our tails between our legs.
"He comes over and said: 'Are yous going to be like this all night, why are you so miserable? It's a bad moment but that's when you stay together and need everyone together. Also, this is just the beginning.'
"By the end, he basically said he wanted us all on the dancefloor by the end of the night. We were singing 'We are Liverpool'. It was totally different to anything that I've ever experienced before."
Fast forward another year, and Klopp himself went viral after he was filmed singing defiantly with friends after Liverpool's Champions League final defeat to Real Madrid in 2018.
"We saw the European Cup. Madrid had all the f*****g luck. We swear we keep on being cool. We'll bring it back to Liverpool."
Another 12 months later, Klopp would deliver on such a tongue-in-cheek vow as the Reds beat Tottenham Hotspur to win the European Cup for the sixth time in the club's history.
If you don't laugh, you'll cry. After the rain, comes the rainbow. Gerrard might have feared backlash would come the Liverpool squad's way back in 2015, but at the time the viral video at least brought a smile to supporters’ faces after a disappointing season. It was at least a sign they weren't defeated and an attitude Klopp would no doubt want to see in his future squad.
Now looking back, that sign of camaraderie in honour of Toure, demonstrated immediately after such a low, was a small, first step taken by the players left behind who would go on to become Klopp’s ‘mentality monsters’ in the months and years ahead.
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