Today, do you honestly think it is my job to make this kind of question happen …” Cut to the long, painful pause. Chuck in a deep, shaming stare, eyes that have suddenly become death rays of betrayal and disgust and Pep Guardiola himself transformed from a man cheerfully toasting his own FA Cup final victory to a grizzled chief detective addressing a room full of convicted perverts. Guardiola had the wind entirely at his back at this point, sitting in the Wembley press room an hour after Manchester City’s 6-0 defeat of Watford in May 2019.
Success drowns out every other noise in football. To be good is also to be good, noble, virtuous. History is written by the domestic treble winners.
Right up until the moment it isn’t. The question in question was asked by Rob Harris of the . It was basically this: information is now in the public domain that suggests Roberto Mancini received a second salary from Abu Dhabi when he was City manager.
Mancini was one of Guardiola’s immediate predecessors. So had he, Pep, ever received two salaries? Even as Harris was asking this he was interrupted by City’s press officer, saying: “We’re not going here, we’re really just not going there.” A simple “no” would have done the job.
Instead the exchange ended with another beautifully executed mad-dog stare from Guardiola; not angry, just sad and disappointed. But also, let’s be honest, really angry as well. Fast forward to this week and a clip has been doing the rounds of the same Rob Harris, now of Sky News, and still the same perky, questing figure.
Harris is approaching Ferran Soriano this time, Pep’s key man through that era, and asking the same entirely legitimate things, with a very different outcome. Awkward questions from awkward people. It turns out these are still the best disinfectant.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
