🚨 Yaya Touré's latest career move is his weirdest yet | OneFootball

Less than two months after his agent claimed he had retired from football, Yaya Touré has signed for the seventh club of his nomadic career.

The 36-year-old Ivorian midfielder has rocked up at Chinese second division side Qingdao Huanghai, and he looks pretty pleased about it.

Touré will be playing alongside former Bolton and West Ham forward Ricard Vaz Te at the Shandong-based club, who are managed by former Barcelona youth team coach Jordi Vinyals.

“Since the start of my football career, I have always loved challenges and now I have decided to take this new challenge and make history once again with Qingdao Huanghai Football Club!” wrote the Premier League and Champions League winner via his official website.

“This is a very exciting young club with a lot of potential and we share the same philosophy – that is to play beautiful football! It will be my great honour to grow and succeed with this club!

https://twitter.com/YayaToure/status/1146355430395994112

“I am very happy to be part of the Huanghai family here in Qingdao, China. The club owner Mr. Wang and everyone here at the club make me feel at home. The fans have also been fantastic and showed so much love!

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank the club owner and staff for their warm welcome and my Chinese agent for the great care and support. I believe my experiences in football will offer something new to this growing club and together we can make great history!

“I can’t wait to let my football do the magic once again, let’s enjoy football together!”

The move comes exactly nine years and one day since Touré joined Manchester City from Barcelona.

The veteran has been without a club since his contract at Olympiacos was terminated by mutual consent in December 2018 and in May this year, his agent Dimitry Seluk claimed he had officially hung up his boots to pursue a coaching career.

“I say this for the first time: Yaya decided to end his career as a champion,” Seluk told Russian outlet Sport 24 on 10 May.

“The farewell match given to him by Manchester City, in principle, was the real end of his playing career. Not only in this team, but in general.

“Yaya is one of the best players in Africa and he had one of the brightest careers in the history of African football.

“Therefore, he should also leave football beautifully, at his peak.”

But Touré contradicted his representative’s claim while working as a pundit for Sky Sports just a few days later, and he is now set to embark on what will surely be one final swan song in the Far East.

It’s quite the U-turn from a player who, back in January 2017, told the Telegraph: “I always say that if I went to China I would end up feeling angry there.

“Do you play football because you love football or do you play because you want to make money? Me, I just want to play football because I enjoy it. I love playing. I enjoy helping my team-mates, I enjoy playing against the big players and teams.

“I want to carry on in that way. Some people have the mentality that they want to do that [go to China] – to try something different. But for me, my feeling is that I want to play more football.”