We don’t often cover opinion pieces from abroad at Sport Witness, but when we do, we ensure we bring you the best of the best, or the worst of the worst, and it’s for you to decide which side of the balance this next one by Juanma Rodriguez on Pep Guardiola and his yellow ribbon for Marca ends up.
Starting off by asking if we can ‘seriously talk about a consolidated democratic system in England’ after this debacle, the journalist explains that it is because of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola that Spain ‘knew that Spanish democracy had cracks, dark spaces and, finally, political prisoners’.
How? ‘Because at the same time as being a football coach, Guardiola acts as the father of the Catalan homeland to replace Carles Puigdemont (currently thought to be in refuge in Brussels to resist extradition attempts) and goes around giving lessons of democracy around the world after having been a member of Al-Ahli SC in Qatar’. Guardiola played for Doha club Al-Ahi at the end of his career.
Having left Spain to manage in Germany, the 47-year-old then moved to England, seemingly ‘the ideal political refuge for the asylee on €25m/year’.
How wrong he apparently was.
Now threatened with a sanction by the FA for wearing his yellow ribbon ‘in honour of Oriol Junqueras’, Guardiola’s treatment causes Rodriguez to bemoan England’s democracy, accusing the country of ‘misunderstanding the former Al-Ahli SC football’.
Juanma also states Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Robert Walpole, William Pitt, Frederick John Robinson, Benjamin Disraeli and Edward Heath would be ‘turning in their graves’ at the Manchester City manager’s treatment.
Explaining that ‘we will not realise the true privilege of breathing the same air as the genius from Sampeador until many years have passed’, Pep Guardiola’s next challenge will be to convince England to ‘circulate on the right hand side of the road’.
Ridiculous, right?
However, when you take into account that Juanma labels himself a ‘madridista’ and a ‘profound admirer of José Mourinho’, it’s quite obvious what his aim was here… just a great big dollop of sarcasm.
