The Africa Cup of Nations could not have come at a worse time for Manchester City.
Last week, ahead of the English club’s Premier League match away to Everton, Yaya Toure departed for the continental championship, which begins Saturday in Equatorial Guinea. Without their best midfielder, who had scored seven goals in his last 11 outings before joining up with his Ivory Coast teammates, City took just a single point from Goodison Park.
They haven’t won without him in the line-up since April, and in his absence these next few weeks they’ll be facing Arsenal, Middlesbrough (FA Cup), Chelsea, Hull City, Stoke City and, depending on Les Elephants’ progress at the tournament, Newcastle United.
He’ll be especially missed at Stamford Bridge on Jan. 31 in a showdown that will go some way toward determining the destination of the title.
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Chelsea, incidentally, haven’t lost a single player to either the African Cup of Nations or Asian Cup, which is also taking place this month, and neither have top-four contenders Arsenal and Manchester United.
Now, the timing of the tournament—it falls just after the mid-point of the Premier League campaign—has rarely been a determining factor in the title race, and in 2012 Manchester City lifted the trophy despite playing important matches without Yaya Toure as well as his brother Kolo. And in both 2006 and 2010 Chelsea finished atop the table even as the likes of Didier Drogba, Michael Essien and Salomon Kalou missed more than a month of play while on international duty.
That said, it’s undeniable that the Cup of Nations puts strain on squad depth, which is enhanced among the division’s biggest clubs at least in part to deal with the absences of key contributors. The frequency with which the competition is held (this will be its fourth instalment in six years) isn’t helpful, either.
It’s a strain also felt by individual players, who occasionally have to make important decisions regarding their international and club careers, and how the two affect each other.
West Ham United’s Alex Song, for example, recently announced his retirement from Cameroon to attempt, as he put it, “to rebuild my career” at Upton Park. Initially omitted from the Indomitable Lions he was later asked to join up with the squad—a rather bizarre sequence of events that no doubt aided his decision.
But it’s hard to say he didn’t make the right one.
A bit player at Barcelona by the time of his Camp Nou exit last summer, Song represented something of a coup for the Hammers when he signed on loan in August and has since been a big part of the London club’s accomplishments to date.
Going into Sunday’s match at home to Hull, West Ham are seventh in the standings and just four points back of Manchester United and the Champions League places. And after Tuesday’s win over Everton on penalties they’ll also be partaking in the fourth round of the FA Cup.
Song, for his part, has already started more Premier League matches this term than he did in La Liga all of last, and for a 27-year-old midfielder who has spent much of the last two years on the bench it’s understandable he’d prioritize the whole of his career ahead of a single event that happens to interrupt a potentially formative few months with his club.
He can always come out of retirement for the next World Cup cycle, when internationals follow the FIFA calendar and for which there is considerable precedent.
Toure, meanwhile, continues to pursue that elusive, continental honour that has always seemed just out of reach for Ivory Coast’s “Golden Generation,” much of which has already given up the ghost.
Manchester City may well suffer without him, but it’s the decision he’s taken, and you can hardly fault him for it. His presence at the Cup of Nations surprises no one, least of all his club.
The Confederation of African Football is entitled to stage their marquee event at whatever point in their calendar they deem appropriate. That’s inarguable. But it doesn’t mean some high-profile players and managers don’t have to make some hard decisions as a result. Toure and Song are just the latest examples.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter