The future was lunch, then after that, Aston Villa. Defiant, deluded, obdurate, obtuse, righteous, outraged – whichever adjective you wish to apply to Pep Guardiola’s performance in the media suite ahead of Sunday’s fixture – his allegiance and his loyalty to Manchester City is absolute. Guardiola is going down with this ship, or not, as the case may be.
Guilt is already presumed according to Guardiola. It was, he said, the same with the Uefa crime sheet, and look what happened there. He is committed to the idea that truth is on the side of City, that the assurances he has been given by the owners and the evidence presented by City’s lawyers to Uefa will deliver the same outcome in the conflict with the Premier League.
Before the Uefa ruling he promised to walk away were it proven that the Abu Dhabi ownership had lied to him. That possibility has been removed, so convinced is Guardiola of City’s virtue and so bonded is he to the ownership, board, players and fans. To part is impossible for him now. The club, he said, would accept any ruling handed down by the commission. If this means banishment to game’s nether regions, so be it. It will not break the yoke that binds him to them.
Of course, those nether regions are where City spent much of the recent past, before the involvement of the Abu Dhabi ownership. Time spent in the margins, subordinate to the imperious boots of Manchester United, came to be a part of City’s identity. Laughable as it might appear, City remain in Guardiola’s imagination an iconoclastic, anti-establishment club landing heavyweight blows with middleweight punches. In this scheme they are not just fighting the opposition but the historic power structures that lord it over the game.
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The opening question at his first appearance before the media since Monday’s charge load dropped came from the BBC and did not seek to establish if the players had any knocks. Guardiola turned to his right, staring at nothing in particular. Arms folded, he let out a weary gasp.
It is fair to say he saw the question coming.
In that practiced, mannerly way of his, Guardiola said: “Good morning.” It was in fact 1.33 in the afternoon, but none had the inclination to correct him. He offered his condolences to the victims of the earthquake in Turkey and Syria then met the question of City’s alleged impropriety head on.
In doing so he reeled off the nine Premier League teams that sought City’s exclusion from European competition during the legal cases with Uefa, at the end of which City escaped with limited sanctions. The recital demonstrated either impressive research or paranoia. The motive in this case was, he argued, the same: self-interest driving 19 Premier League clubs to punish City. This is how he sees it. This is the armour he wears. City against the world.
The club is thus depicted not as the richest in the Premier League, as it was during the period of scrutiny before the Saudis invaded Newcastle. Not as the club that stands accused of financial manipulation in order to colonise the Premier League, not as the club that bought the world’s best players, corrupting the competitive environment, but as the eternal underdog, a club without a past, the anti-Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal etc.
Guardiola brings the same single-minded intensity to bear in this portrayal as he does to his coaching, a righteous commitment, a withering conviction that he will prevail. He is smart too. In accepting that others have the right to a view, and that they might be correct, he presents himself as a reasonable man. His problem is not with opposing arguments but the prevailing bias against his team. The damage is done, he pleads, innocent or not. How is that repaired, he asks? It can’t be is the inference.
What Pep said
“Sometimes I have doubts, seven years already is a long time in any country. Now I don’t want to move. Not because people say they lied to you Pep. They didn’t lie to me. Look what happened with Uefa.
“I said to them: what happened? Pep, we did nothing wrong. We proved it. It is the same case.
“Why should I [not] trust my people? Why should I trust the CEOs or the owners of the 19 clubs, the nine clubs like it was with Uefa?
“No, I trust my people. Between them and my people, I trust my people. Not one second for the other ones.
“Just in case we are not innocent we will accept what the judge in the Premier League decides, but what happens if in the same situation that Uefa happened we are innocent, what happens to restore or pay back our damage?
“Because the damage is now for one decade. One week later, Uefa make a statement against us, nine teams – Burnley, Wolves, Leicester, Newcastle, Spurs, Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Chelsea – [write a letter wanting us] out of the Champions League, that they wanted that position.
“Like Julius Caesar, in this world, they are not enemies or friends, just interests. They wanted to put it out to take that position that we won on the pitch, take it in our position. Now it is not different in that moment, absolutely zero. The same articles, the same accusations, the same everything.”
This is where sympathy drains. Guardiola is being disingenuous in claiming vindication in previous cases brought by Uefa. The club reached a settlement in 2014 over FFP breaches. And in 2019 they were fined 30m Euros by Uefa for further breaches and banned from the Champions League for two years. A year later, the court of arbitration for sport overturned the ban and reduced the fine to 10m Euros, ruling that the alleged breaches were not established and some were time-barred. The Premier League’s inquiry is not limited by the same five-year time frame.
Moreover, Guardiola is dissembling before the weight of charges against City by railing at the prevailing mood. The scale of the alleged offending over a nine-year period between 2009 and 2018, and the accusation of non-cooperation during the period of investigation post 2018, is enough to raise even the most reasonable eyebrow. That City are free to defend their position and play on respects the principle of innocence until proven guilty. Indeed the bias in this example rests in Guardiola’s presumption that the world has already taken against him and his team.
None of this would impact on the performance against Aston Villa because nothing has materially changed, he said. The drive for perfection on the pitch continues because it has to, fuelled by the belief that anything less would be insufficient to disturb the forces ranged against them. It was this same sense of structural prejudice that Guardiola evinced at Barcelona to overthrow the regal power of Real Madrid.
Guardiola is all in, consumed by the febrile energy of a tormented lover. It is a powerful emotion creating beautiful teams. It can also pervert reality and warp understanding, blinding those under its spell, who see only what they want to see. Guardiola is right about one thing. It is for the authorities to decide the truth of this case. In the meantime, it was off to the canteen, then back to the office to perfect the plan to whack Villa.
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