Emotional trainer
“It hurts me”: Pep Guardiola has a bout of world-weariness
War everywhere, suffering everywhere: the great football coach Pep Guardiola has a world-weary attack at a press conference – that’s human, but unfortunately it doesn’t help.
Josep “Pep” Guardiola is charismatic and successful. The Manchester City coach is one of the greatest in his field. If someone like that suddenly speaks emotionally about all the suffering in the world at a normal press conference like before the League Cup semi-final against Newcastle United, then it will be heard. That’s not a bad thing at first. Guardiola is one of those people who can speak equally passionately about war deaths and offside traps.
The images are available to all of us
The connecting link was the images: everyone sees what is going on on the monitor when referees watch video sequences. Everyone can form their own opinion. And suddenly Guardiola was at the “genocide in Palestine”, the war in Ukraine, the war in Sudan – everything is visible in the pictures and the clips that are available to all of us.
“Today we can see it, before we couldn’t see it. It hurts me. If it was the other side, it would hurt me just as much. The deaths of thousands of innocent people hurt me. It’s that simple.” When you talk about refugees, it doesn’t matter where they are fleeing from or why, if they get into trouble at sea, you have to help them.
The coach also spoke about the deaths of Renée Goods and Alex Pretti in ICE raids in Minneapolis: “They were killed,” said Guardiola: “Tell me, how can you defend yourself against it?”
Pep Guardiola wants a better world
Guardiola just wants a better world. “Right now we’re killing each other.” There is no perfect society; images of suffering are produced all over the world. “It hurts me,” said Guardiola: “At the moment we are killing each other – and for what?” It’s important to talk about it, “otherwise it just keeps going.”
But in the end, what is the point of lumping all the suffering in the world together in a fit of world-weariness? Nothing but a somehow good feeling. The criticism from the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester showed that things are sometimes more complicated. They were rightly bothered by the choice of words “genocide” in reference to the Gaza war. They warned people to pay attention to their “choice of words” in view of the rampant global anti-Semitism. That is also correct.
Sources: Guardiola’s press conference on YouTube, DPA.
