Of the many ways that Pep Guardiola is not a typical football manager, the strength with which he holds his political convictions is especially striking.
On Tuesday, a seemingly routine pre-match press conference, ahead of his Manchester City side’s League Cup semi-final against Newcastle United, turned into a global talking point.
“Right now we kill each other for what? For what?” he implored a room full of journalists, ostensibly there to get answers to questions about refereeing decisions and City’s inability to play well after half-time.
“I see the images and, I’m sorry, it hurts, it hurts to me, that’s why in every position I can help, speaking up to be a better society — I will not change anything but I try — I will be there. All the time. It’s for my kids, for my family, for you, for all of you, for your families as well.”
Guardiola had been talking about a controversial refereeing decision that had gone against his team in Sunday’s 2-2 draw against Tottenham when he referred to footage of the incident that is there for the world to see. He then linked those kind of images to those that fill our news feeds from conflicts around the world.
“In the history of humanity we have never ever had the info in front of us eyes, watching, more clearly than now,” he said. “Genocide in Palestine, what happened in Ukraine, what happened in Russia, what happened all around the world, in Sudan and everywhere, what happened in front of us. If you don’t want to see it, it’s our problem as human beings.”
He also discussed the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two American citizens killed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Minneapolis.
“From my point of view, justice — you have to talk,” he said. “You have to talk… Look what happened in the United States of America. With Renee Good and Alex Pretti. They have been killed, one a nurse… five or six people around him, go on the grass, 10 shots. Tell me how you can defend that?”
Guardiola had missed his team’s previous pre-match press conference, and some training sessions, because he had been in Barcelona giving a speech at an event organised by charity Act X Palestine.
“I am not neutral,” he said during a passionate speech, where he wore a keffiyeh, a traditional Middle Eastern headscarf, around his neck. “I am Palestinian.”
Similar comments in support of the Palestinian cause made last summer have been fiercely criticised by the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region, which wrote to City’s chairman, Khaldoon Al Mubarak, saying that the 55-year-old’s comments were “not only inaccurate but put the lives of British Jews in Manchester, including those who support your football club, in danger”.
One Jewish lifelong City supporter told the Jewish Chronicle that he has stopped watching the club.
After bringing up the Gaza-Israel war, the Ukraine-Russia war and Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown during his Tuesday press briefing, he was asked what it is about the causes that has prompted him to speak out so openly.
“Here it’s not a question about right or wrong,” he said as part of his answer. “It hurts me. For me, it hurts me. (If) it would (have been) the opposite side, it (would) hurt me… I’m sorry, this is my feeling. You can discuss when… Completely kill thousands of innocent people, it hurts me. It’s no more complicated than that.”
Guardiola has long been a very political person: at the age of just 22, he echoed the words of Josep Tarradellas, a Catalan politician, who had returned to Barcelona in 1977 after 38 years in exile following General Franco’s victory in the Spanish Civil War.
“Citizens of Catalonia, I am here at last!” he declared from the balcony of the Generalitat Palace in Barcelona.
The young Guardiola, standing on the same balcony with a Catalan flag tied around his neck after Barcelona won the European Cup for the first time in their history, held the trophy above his head and said: “Citizens of Catalonia, you have the cup here.”
Guardiola’s sister, Francesca, previously worked for the Catalan government and was dismissed as ambassador to the Nordic countries by then Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy after Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, pushed for independence in 2017.
It is a cause that Guardiola has supported openly and vocally. Two years before Puigdemont held a referendum on independence in Catalonia — the results of which were not recognised by the Spanish central government, forcing him to flee to Belgium — Guardiola had added his name to a list of supporters amid an independence push by then Catalan president Artur Mas.
Guardiola speaks at a rally for Catalan independence in 2017 (Lluis Gene/AFP/Getty Images)
That prompted fierce criticism from Rajoy’s government, with interior minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz saying that Guardiola had represented Spain for money rather than patriotism. Guardiola played for Spain 47 times and, at the time of that criticism from the country’s government, he was asked about his participation.
“The laws told us I had to play for the Spanish national team, because the Catalan one wasn’t legitimate,” Guardiola said, while in charge of Bayern Munich.
“I was delighted to be called up, but you can’t deny what you feel, and I feel very connected to my country, to Catalonia.”
In Manchester, Guardiola wore a yellow ribbon in press conferences and on the touchline in support of Catalonia political figures who had been arrested during Puigdemont’s independence push in 2017.
“Everybody knows why I’m wearing the yellow ribbon, and I hope that sooner or later I can stop wearing it,” he said at a press conference in November that year. “That will be when the people who are imprisoned for wanting to vote will no longer be.”
The English Football Association wrote to Guardiola on at least two occasions at the time, urging him to stop wearing the ribbon, as it contravened rules against wearing a political message. He was fined but continued wearing it for months, including during the League Cup final against Arsenal in February 2018.
“While they are not out, always here (the ribbon) will be shared with me,” he told reporters the previous December.
“They can suspend me for doing that, but the other people are in jail. If they want to suspend me — UEFA, Premier League, FIFA — it’s OK.”
Guardiola wearing a yellow ribbon in support of Catalan politicians in exile (Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images)
On several occasions during his time in England, Guardiola has worn clothing emblazoned with the logo for Open Arms, a group who, in 2015, first sailed to Lesbos, a Greek Island, to assist Syrian refugees fleeing war. Open Arms had taken action after seeing the image of Alan Kurdi, a two-year-old Syrian boy, lying dead on a beach.
“Pep knew about our work from the media and contacted us offering to help,” Laura Lanuza, Open Arms’ communications and projects director, told Forbes in 2021.
“He was moved by the humanitarian emergency in the Aegean and Mediterranean, where more than 20,000 people have died trying to reach Europe in the last five years.
“He believed our values matched his.”
Guardiola’s political positions have not always sat neatly with the fact that City are owned by Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, better known in Manchester as Sheikh Mansour, who is the vice president of the United Arab Emirates.
City’s chairman, Khaldoon al Mubarak, is an influential figure in the Middle East. The founding Chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority in the UAE, he is also chairman of the Emirates Nuclear Energy Corporation and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, and in January was one of the first signatories of U.S. President Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’.
The UAE has been heavily criticised by human rights groups for its jailing of protestors and activists; in 2024, 43 people were sentenced to life in prison, having already been incarcerated since 2013, after being found guilty of terror offences, a move that sparked international criticism.
It was against this backdrop that Guardiola was asked about his support for Catalan political prisoners following that League Cup final in 2018, to which he replied: “Every country decides the way they want to live for themselves. If he decides to live in that (country), it is what it is. I am in a country with democracy installed since years ago, and try to protect that situation.”
Questions have been asked as to why Manchester City’s owners, and Guardiola’s employers, have not been more prominently criticised for the role of the UAE in what has been described as genocide in Sudan.
In 2025, Sudan took the UAE to the International Court of Justice, accusing it of propping up paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces in the civil war that has ravaged the country.
Guardiola has not been asked for his views on that subject recently but did mention Sudan on Tuesday in the same breath as Palestine and Ukraine.
“There is not a perfect society, I am not perfect, nobody is perfect,” he said at another point ahead of City’s game against Newcastle. “Societies are not perfect but you have to work to be a better place.”