In praise of Pep Guardiola for speaking out, regardless of the inevitable ‘Whataboutery’ accusations

Pep Guardiola seemed surprised nobody had asked him before.

“It’s the first time in 10 years that one journalist asks me about that,” he said, when a mention of Palestine, Ukraine and Sudan in his pre-match press conference was picked up on by The Athletic’s Sam Lee.

“Today we can see it,” Guardiola continued. “Before, we could not see it. Today we see. It hurts me. For me, it hurts me. If it was the opposite side, it would hurt me… it’s no more complicated than that.”

He went on to discuss the recent killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in the U.S. city of Minneapolis. “They have been killed, one a nurse,” he said. “Tell me how you can defend that?”

You wonder whether Guardiola was fishing for the question, having brought up those topics in an answer about City midfielder Rodri’s recent comments on officiating in their games — not the most natural segue into world affairs, but it perhaps wasn’t surprising that he wanted another opportunity to raise things he cares about.

Last week, Guardiola appeared at an event put on in Barcelona, his home city in Spain, by Act X Palestine, an organisation for humanitarian projects in the country.

“Over these last two years,” he said in a speech at the event, “when I see children in the images on social media and on television, crying and asking where their mother is, while she is buried under the rubble but they do not know it yet, I always wonder, ‘What must they be thinking?’ I feel that we have abandoned them. I always imagine them saying, ‘Where are you? Come and help us’, and so far we have not done that.”

It’s not the first time he’s said similar things.

Last June, in a speech after receiving an honorary degree from the University of Manchester, he said: “What we see in Gaza is so painful. It’s not about ideology, it’s about love of life and care for your neighbour. … It’s about choice and refusing to be silent when it matters most.”

And in November, he promoted a game between the Catalan and Palestinian national teams, calling it a “cry for solidarity in tribute to the more than 400 Palestinian sportsmen who have been assassinated in Gaza”.

Guardiola is such an intense, obsessive man that it’s sometimes easy to think of him being hyper-focused on football, only vaguely aware of the outside world. So it’s always interesting when he reminds us, semi-regularly, that he isn’t.

Maybe it’s unfair to criticise those managers who don’t speak on other things: lord knows, you can’t excessively blame someone for seeking a quiet life, and it doesn’t help to harangue people for not speaking about topics they’re not well versed enough in.

Guardiola should be lauded for speaking up, but there is a spectre hanging over this, and something that is inevitably brought up whenever he says anything of this nature. Ultimately, Guardiola works for Abu Dhabi. You’ll either know all about this already, or you can do your own research, but for the sake of brevity, we can just say here that it’s a state whose Amnesty International page makes for pretty spicy reading.

It’s undoubtedly not great that Guardiola, a man with a moral compass, has been happy to work for his Abu Dhabi bosses for almost a decade. His position has been basically ironclad for most of that time, so he is in a strong position to speak up against the dictatorship of his ultimate employers.

His answers on this topic in the past have been unsatisfactory, to say the least. In 2018, after he was fined by the Football Association for wearing a yellow ribbon in support of Catalan independence, he was asked by the journalist Rob Harris about the conditions and lack of democracy in Abu Dhabi. “Every country decides the way they want to live for themselves,” he replied.

Does it represent moral cowardice, or unpleasant inconsistency, to speak mainly about things that aren’t likely to present any tangible consequences for him? Maybe. Probably. But there’s inconsistency everywhere. Most people are inconsistent. Most people have probably had moments of moral cowardice. Should that preclude us from talking about moral issues? I would say no.

It feels counterproductive to use all of this against Guardiola.

‘Whataboutery’, someone cleverly wagging their finger and pointing out an apparent moral inconsistency, just feels like an expectation of moral purity. Or perhaps a projection of what moral consistency should look like: if you speak about this, then I assume you have to also speak about this. Guardiola isn’t morally pure. Few people are morally pure. If you are, or perceive yourself to be, then congratulations.

He has made his compromises and decided that the cost of having the perfect job, essentially tailored entirely to him, at the very top of football, is having to work for the people he works for. Perhaps that’s a bigger compromise than the rest of us make, but we all do make them. Are you happy with everything your employer does? Do you only take money from good people? Is everything in your life strictly governed by morality? Again, if you do, great. But if not, that shouldn’t compromise your ability to talk about other things.

Zack Polanski, the leader of the UK’s Green Party, has spoken about something similar when discussing his ‘green credentials’: he told The Times recently that he is vegan, doesn’t drive and doesn’t travel by air, but that accusations of hypocrisy against anyone who tries to be an environmentalist while not being all of those things, is a distraction from the real issue.

The context of Polanski’s comments was slightly different, but the essential message was still the same: you don’t have to be entirely morally pure to care about or speak on moral issues. If you did, then barely anyone would say anything. All saying “…yes, but…!” achieves is to distract from the actual issues that Guardiola has raised.

“There is not a perfect society,” Guardiola said. “I am not perfect, nobody is perfect, societies are not perfect, but you have to work to be in a better place.”

It would be better, preferable, great even, if Guardiola did speak out against Abu Dhabi. But he’s speaking about something. He’s speaking about Palestine, about Sudan, about ICE, and for someone in his position to do that is welcome. The rest doesn’t negate that.

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