Pep and Hypocrisy
Over the last few days, Pep Guardiola has found himself under increased scrutiny for his political views and affiliations.
Pep was recently charged by the FA for wearing a yellow ribbon on his chest, a symbol used to demonstrate support of political prisoners of the Catalan independence movement. When asked about why he deems it fit to protest Catalan prisoners, but not the citizens arbitrarily detained by regimes in the UAE (City are owned by Sheikh Mansour) and Qatar (in the past Guardiola was a paid representative for their 2022 World Cup bid), the City manager offered some limp responses, for which he has been roundly slated by broad sections of the footballing press.
There’s a valid argument to be made about excluding all political symbols from football, as allowing some but not others leaves the FA as moral arbiters — although there is a case that they already are, given their support and defense of the poppy in recent years. That isn’t the argument being made, though. Most of the criticism is specifically related to Pep and the contradiction between his support for Catalan independence and his affiliation with Qatar in the past.
It’s difficult to see what is going to be achieved by all this.
If Guardiola acknowledges the inconsistency of his views and admits that it’s morally dubious to condemn oppression in one part of the world while being employed by what is effectively the publicity arm of an oppressive regime, what then? Football journos can pat themselves on the back for holding an influential public figure to account and for catching out someone who doesn’t practice what they preach.
Is the idea to put Pep in a situation where he either concedes his support for Catalan independence or he resigns from his position, citing the conflict of personal interests? What about a scenario in which he didn’t take the City job in the first place for political reasons?
What would any of this solve? City aren’t going to cease to be owned by Sheikh Mansour overnight. If someone generally less scrupulous, who openly states that they have no problem accepting blood money and being complicit in human rights abuses, took the manager’s job, would that be better?
It’s undeniably satisfying to call someone out on their bullshit, especially people of considerable public stature who use their position to grandstand, but I can’t help but feel that if the media at large have an issue with the way that City are run, they need to be directing their questions towards the FA, rather than City’s manager.
After all, the FA require all potential new football club owners to pass a “fit-and-proper-persons” test. That mandate is in place to ensure that prospective owners are financially solvent enough to own a club without putting the club’s existence being at risk. It doesn’t seem too much of a stretch to think that the FA’s definition of a “fit-and-proper-person” could be expanded to exclude ownership groups who are complicit in human rights abuse.
If there is truly concern over the morality of the owners of football clubs, this is where effort should be expended — putting pressure on the governing body of the sport, who can actually affect meaningful change in the state of the game, rather than grilling a manager at a press conference.
It might be a bit of a hard ask to expect that sort of meaningful change though, given that the FA have recently signed a knowledge-sharing agreement with Qatar. As part of this “memorandum of understanding” the FA hope to “positively influence football in Qatar” and have made commitments to tackle broader social issues in the peninsular. While that may genuinely be their intention, from the outside this simply looks like an endorsement of an oppressive regime from our FA. No wonder chairman Greg Dyke has struggled to find any gay footballers willing to engage with him on LGBT issues within the men’s game.
With our nation’s own footballing governing body hopelessly entangled with oppressive regimes, it becomes difficult to see how they can act as an effective filter for specific owners to ensure the integrity of the game. And if they’re not in a position to do so, then who is?
There’s also a slight hint that some of this is motivated by the fact that City have been so good this season; on the pitch they’ve been virtually irreproachable so other avenues of criticism must be sought. That’s not to discredit the line of questioning; this is simply offering a reason for why this particular issue seems to have gained traction at this moment in time.
After all, the Premier League is awash with morally questionable money. A significant chunk of Arsenal’s funding comes from their shirt and stadium sponsorship deal with Emirates (who are a subsidiary of the same government who own Manchester City) and owner Stan Kroenke is hardly a saint either. Meanwhile there are innumerable Premier League clubs sponsored by gambling companies and Stoke City’s owner, Peter Coates, is the chairman of Bet365, one of the world’s largest online betting companies. I’m not trying to equate gambling addiction with the persecution of LGBT people and the arbitrary detention/ torture of citizens in the UAE, or with the flagrant abuse of migrant workers in Qatar, but if we’re going to start taking umbrage with football clubs who derive significant portions of their income from organisations that cause social ills, we’re going to have our work cut out. City are far from the only offenders in this respect.
All of which makes the justified criticism of Pep and City somewhat redundant — unless there’s an overhaul in how football is administrated and governed in this country, taking potshots at individual clubs seems to serve little purpose.
