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Yaya Touré: ‘After the FA Cup, we believed we could beat United’

Y aya Touré was Manchester City’s buccaneering force when Roberto Mancini’s side ended a 35-year trophy drought by beating Stoke City 1-0 in the 2011 FA Cup final, claiming the first silverware of Sheikh Mansour’s proprietorship.

The Ivorian scored the winner at Wembley, as he had done in the semi-final defeat of Manchester United which marked the moment City began to dislodge their neighbours as England’s dominant force. Touré, too, was in the XI that handed United a 6-1 hiding six months later at Old Trafford which continued an ascendancy that, 12 years on, has them seeking to beat United again at Wembley. This time in Saturday’s FA Cup final, the second step of the attempt by Pep Guardiola’s gilded team to landi the treble and emulate Sir Alex Ferguson’s 1999 vintage.

Touré joined from Guardiola’s Barcelona for £24m in summer 2010, arriving as a two-time La Liga champion and treble winner with the Catalan club. “As soon as I signed and came into City my head was about trying to change things and make things happen – try to help with that positive mentality, that winning mentality on the pitch, and my professionalism and desire to achieve,” he says.

“In that period United were so comfortable – they’d win week in, week out, they were winning the league easily and on top of us were all these other teams like Chelsea, Arsenal. So when you come into a new environment where the league is competitive like that, what you have to do is work hard, improve and try to do better than them.

“Winning that first trophy was important. The players understood why I was coming and could see the hard work I put in. It was totally tireless, to be honest with you. It was game after game. I wanted to set the bar high. I wanted them to see

Read more on theguardian.com