The Ivory Coast and Manchester City midfielder, Yaya Toure, was voted world’s number nine by the Soccer-Laduma journalists.

The 30-year-old seems to become better by each season and is the midfield motor in Manchester City’s revival since his move to the Etihad Stadium in 2010.

Toure is renowned for combining great vision, passing ability, and physical power with technique.

He started his career as a striker, but was nailed on as a centre back during his term at Barcelona. He played over 100 games for the Blaugrana and was part of the historic 2009 team which won six trophies under Pep Guardiola.

Since his arrival at Manchester City, he is arguably the world’s best box-to-box midfielder and continuously scores a number of key goals for the Citizens. Most notably are his goals in the 2011 FA Cup semi-final and Final, which led the club to its first major trophy in 35 years.

In the 2012 season, Toure and City won the club’s first Premier League title for 44 years.

On international level, Toure has 67 caps and scored 15 goals for Ivory Coast, representing the team in their first appearance in a FIFA World Cup, in the 2006 competition and in 2010, as well as in five Africa Cup of Nations tournaments.

He was deservedly voted CAF African Footballer of the Year for third consecutive time last night.

His influence, however, couldn’t prevent Manchester City of going title-less out of the 2012-13 season, but he and the Citizens seem to be unstoppable under new coach Pellegrini.

He already scored 10 goals – four of which coming from direct free-kicks – in his 19 Premier League games so far this season. This number is already higher than the six league goals he managed in each of his last three season and helped City to be just one point behind log leaders Arsenal.

He has the highest pass accuracy of all Premier League players with over 90 percent of his 1399 passes being successful. He also helped his side to qualify for the knockout stages of the Champions League for the first time in history and City are still in both domestic Cup competitions.

Former England international, Jamie Redknapp, said about Yaya Toure: “He is so skilful for such a big player, and when Toure is on the charge, it’s like poetry in motion.”

There is nothing more to say, besides Yaya Toure deserves to be the only African footballer in Soccer-Laduma’s world’s top 10. 

By David Kappel